Jewish Family Service

of Metropolitan Detroit

"My husband, Ira, and I were really con-
cerned for her before and during the pro-
cedure Cyndi said. "We couldn't imagine
someone 21 being ready to do this for me"

Cyndi's Turn
The next step was "just like you see on
TV" Cyndi said. "A man took the bag of
Bayla's stem cells from the hospital in
Detroit and flew it across the country to
where I was in California. It did not leave
his sight. He brought it into my hospital
room and seven or eight nurses read a list
of numbers and verified that it was for
me. Then they hooked me up to the bag
through a surgically implanted IV in my
chest, and the man left"
She was surrounded by her family dur-
ing the two-hour process. "What was in
the bag was more valuable than gold to
me; it was my life she said.
"By the time I received the stem cells, I
was really sick. I had had extreme chemo-
therapy and radiation and was in seclusion
because I was susceptible to infection. I
was on pain medication and all kinds of
other drugs"
With a long road ahead of her, she was
able to leave the hospital three weeks after
the transplant.
"Months and months later, I started to
get my strength back" Cyndi said. This
past September, she participated in the
Avon Walk for Breast Cancer in Santa
Barbara to support research for the disease
battled by two of her sisters. But she says
she and her sisters "are all working our
way back to health"
"I still get fatigued in the late after-
noons, but I'm in remission and doing
great, thanks to Bayla. My prognosis is
good"
Bayla also spent part of this past sum-
mer giving back
"She shared her story and coordinated
a bone marrow recruitment drive at
Camp Sternberg in Narrowsburg, N.Y.,"
said Marti Freund, community relations
manager for Gift of Life. "She encouraged
camp staff to join the registry through the
`Finding the Hero in You at Camp pro-
gram, which we run in partnership with
the Foundation for Jewish Camp"

Time For A Meeting
A couple of months after the procedure,
Bayla received a letter of thanks from
Cyndi. Also every couple of months, Gift
of Life would call me with health updates,"
she said. "But legally I was not allowed to
find out any personal information for a
year after the procedure, and then only if
both parties agreed"
When the year was up, Bayla submit-
ted her name, address and email address
to Gift of Life and received an email from
Cyndi, a Jewish woman, who told her she
was from Oak Park, Calif., a coincidence
for Bayla, who lives in Oak Park, Mich.
"She asked me to call her, and in our first

conversation, she mentioned that she
wanted to meet me Bayla said.
Earlier last month, that meeting took
place on a Friday afternoon that led to
Shabbat dinner at the Hochheiser home,
along with family members, including
Bayla's late Aunt Tami's husband, Gary
Fink of Farmington Hills.
Cyndi visited, along with her sister Joy
Bressler and her husband, Gary, who sur-
prisingly was born in Detroit and raised in
Oak Park.
"When Bayla's mom opened the door
and welcomed us, there was an amazing,
heartwarming, pleasant feeling" Cyndi
said. "I wanted to burst out crying"
"It was very emotional" Bayla remem-
bered. "My mom, Cyndi and Joy were all
in tears. It was a little overwhelming for
me being thanked so many times for doing
something that to me seemed so ethical
and small."
Cyndi hugged Bayla and told her soflty,
"From the bottom of my heart, thank you"
"I was so compelled to meet her, I
would have moved mountains" Cyndi
said. "How can you say, 'Thank you for
saving my life?' I thought about it every
single day. In my mind, the best way to
thank her was to physically hold her and
tell her that she didn't just save my life; she
gave my mother and father their baby; my
three older sisters who I talk to every day
got their sister back; my sons, who are 20
and 23, away at school, can call at 2 a.m. if
they don't feel well. She gave my husband
someone to come home to and my best
friends back their friend. I wanted to tell
her in person, 'You didn't save a life, but a
village:
"She's such a joy, an amazing, phenome-
nal, unbelievable, selfless girl with a great,
big smile, who can turn anything around.
It was amazing to meet her and hold her
and feel her positive energy"
Among gifts for the family, Cyndi
brought Bayla a necklace with a porce-
lain charm of Moses holding the Ten
Commandments. "I wanted her to have
something dainty that she would be com-
fortable wearing to remind her forever and
ever of what she did" she said.
Bayla plans to visit Cyndi and her family
in California later this month. "My whole
family wants to meet her and hug her"
Cyndi said.
The families already have an unex-
pected connection. Cyndi discovered the
Hochheisers and Cyndi's ancestors each
have a branch on the same family tree.

An Inspiration
Bayla relayed that her inspiration to be a
donor came both from the memory of her
Aunt Tami and from an act performed by
her brother Yossie.
"The main reason I entered the registry
was because he donated bone marrow"
Bayla said. Yossie, who is now 30, was a
donor five years ago for a 12-year-old boy

from Florida, who had been suffering from
T-cell lymphoma and has had no positive
scans since the transplant. Bayla was with
Yossie when he first met the recipient, with
whom he still keeps in touch.
"My sister and I did what we think any-
one would have done" said Yossie, who
lives in University Heights, Ohio. "We are
blessed to be put in a position to be able
to make a difference in someone's life. It is
not a Jewish thing; I donated to a non-Jew.
It is a human being thing"
Each year he speaks at a Cleveland-area
day school. "I like to tell the story of a per-
son walking down the street mid-Decem-
ber, who sees a baby stroller in the middle
of the street with a plow coming full-speed
ahead. Who would not take the time to
push the stroller out of the street? We don't
know whether there is a baby inside or
not; we don't know whether it's a Jewish
baby. We would all take the time and move
it to the side of the road.
"It's the same thing with getting
swabbed (to be added to the registry). We
don't know if our swab will save someone's
life. We do it because if that was our baby
in the stroller we would want someone to
save our child's life"
Gift of Life's Freund said, "Both Bayla
and her brother really are an inspiration to
anybody looking to join a registry. If there
were more people like them, we would
never have to worry about finding a match
and more lives would be saved. They are
really heroes and should be praised for
such a selfless act that gave somebody a
second chance at life"
Bayla said, "I feel truly honored to be
able to have saved someone's life. Everyone
in this world deserves to live, and I am just
happy I got to help someone be able to do
that"

With your support
through the
Friends of the Family
Campaign,
Jewish Family Service

...a safety net for
our community.

Matthew was recently laid
off of work. He has heart
disease, diabetes and
high blood pressure and
is receiving medications
from the JFS Prescription
Assistance Program.

Last year JFS

Provided nearly
$750,000 to
individuals and
families in crisis

❑

IMP Distributed

7,700 prescription
medications to
uninsured adults

About Gift Of Life

• Donors must be between ages
18-60.
• An average of one in 1,000 indi-
viduals in the Gift of Life registry
are asked to donate every year.
• All expenses are paid by the
patient's insurance or Gift of Life.
• Only 30 percent of patients will
find a suitable match within their
family; the rest must seek the
assistance of unrelated volunteer
donors.
• Testing for a specific patient
must be done privately.
• There are 212,585 registered
donors and 9,335 matches in 40
countries served.

To contact the Gift of Life Bone
Marrow Foundation, call (800)
962-7769 or send an email to
info@giftoflife.org .

4 /7

Responded to
Nol ■ 7,000 calls for help
about financial
assistance, mental
health issues,
transportation and
needs related to
older adults

Your Donation
Can Make a Difference

www.jfsdetroit.org/friends

248-592-2339

December 13 • 2012

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