Craig Saved A Life, Now Help Him Survive.

Craig Lavrenz is not your ordinary everyday 31-year-old. He has lost everything after doing an incredibly selfless act, donating his peripheral blood stem cells (PBSC) to a complete stranger who was dying of leukemia, and only had a short time left to live. Thanks to Craig’s selfless donation, this stranger is still alive! (The Organization that Craig selflessly donated through cut off all communication with the recipient of Craig’s stem cells! Craig has made multiple requests to be put back in touch with his recipient, but every attempt that he has made has been ignored! He’s been fighting for his life ever since he donated, and is facing a critical juncture now because of a pile-up of medical bills and rent. Without help, he will lose the last little bit of dignity and pride that hasn’t already been taken from him, the roof over his head! Craig’s pain began with an act of altruism, when he saved the life of a complete stranger by donating peripheral blood stem cells. Craig signed up to be a stem cell/marrow donor for the nonprofit org Be the Match (aka National Marrow Donor Program) in 2014, and got a surprising phone call in September 2017. Prior to this Craig continued to serve others by working with individuals with down-syndrome, something Craig has done since he was a freshman in High School. In fact, Craig was the Founding President of his HighSchools Chapter of Best Buddies International, and has since gone on to volunteer thousands of hours! He was in his last year of law school and had already landed his dream job at a top-tier law firm. The stress and work of preparing to graduate law school, however, did not distract him from his goal to save someone from dying of leukemia. Be the Match made countless promises that the procedure was safe and that any side effects would be covered by the organization. Craig believed these assurances and went into the procedure with high hopes. What unfolded next was the beginning of a long-term nightmare. Craig began having serious, painful reactions to the 5 day-long pre-donation injections of Neupogen, a white-cell booster. Tests showed that his white blood and stem cell count had shot through the roof, but Craig could barely even walk. Such severe pain was an unusual reaction, but Craig continued to push forward, motivated by promises from the organization that things were “going as planned.” In reality, the plan unraveled. Craig’s life was never going to be the same. After the stem cell transplant took place, his symptoms began to intensify. Chronic, debilitating pain began to slow his productivity. He lost his dream job at the law firm. He drained his savings to pay for the increasingly exorbitant medical expenses. His cabinet was now filled with brutally strong opioid pain medications, but each pill he took only dulled the pain slightly. Craig is today at the worst stage of his health so far, ending up in the ER multiple times because of blackouts and seizures. He has received potentially terminal diagnoses as well as other extremely grim outlooks from some of the best doctors in Southern California. A massive medication regime helps him get out of bed in the morning, but that’s often as much as he can muster. To date, the donor organization that promised to take care of side effects with its own insurance program is MIA. It has not paid a single penny to compensate for Craig’s medical care, unemployment insurance, and spiraling living expenses. Craig is less than two weeks away from becoming homeless and losing his current health insurance, due to not being able to work and not being able to pay his bills due to his rapid decline in health. He needs your help not just to handle his debt, but to continue living another day with medication and essentials. Craig says he is stunned and ashamed by his current condition, and how his life has fallen apart, but is hoping that assistance can provide the energy and hope to keep fighting.