Active 13-year-old Will Dickes likes to skateboard, enjoys Boy Scouts and plays the drums in a way that only a parent with a drummer in the house can understand…

But Will, an eighth-grader at Kellogg Middle School, has shown grit unparalleled by even tae kwon do standards while suffering from acute lymphoblastic leukemia, going through remission and a relapse…

Marrow donation is a gift of life, said Dr. Vilmarie Rodriguez, a Mayo pediatric bone marrow transplant specialist. Patients from underrepresented ethnic groups have a harder time finding a matching donor, she said.

Post-Bulletin by Jeff Hansel, 11/5/09

Tags: bone marrow transplant, Cancer, leukemia, Pediatrics, Transplant