His medical odyssey is chronicled in a documentary, coproduced by his wife, that will be shown Saturday afternoon at the Franklin Institute.
When Brecker got sick, his doctors first used the usual channels to find a bone marrow donor. But no match existed among the 16.5 million donors registered with the National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP) and its international partners. So Brecker's family and friends sent out a plea for more people to register.
At the time, he had myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS), which can become a fast-growing cancer, acute myelogenous leukemia, or AML.
One such donor drive was held on Oct. 30, 2005, at the Beth Sholom Synagogue in Elkins Park.
On that sunny day, Washington Township, N.J., resident Denise Gould Ledvina registered with a friend. They got a cheek swab to identify their tissue type (Human Leukocyte Antigen, or HLA) - which matches donors and recipients - and their names went into the registry.
Unfortunately, Ledvina was not a match for Brecker, who died on Jan. 13, 2007. Ledvina, however, was a match for a 53-year-old newspaper reporter and mother of three with leukemia (me).
When asked to donate, she said, "There was no question that I would do it."
I ended up using another donor's cells, but when the leukemia returned, Ledvina was asked again, in late 2008, whether she would undergo the monthlong prep and six-hour procedure. Again, she said yes.
A month later, a bag of the Philadelphia native's strong, healthy stem cells entered my bloodstream as I lay in bed at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston under the care of doctors from the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. The day that I received Ledvina's cells through a catheter implanted in my breastbone - Jan. 31, 2009 - became my new birthday, a chance to start again after four bone marrow transplants.
