Central New York Lacrosse Player Needs Bone Marrow Transplant

Taylor Matt, shown here (top left) with her ethix Girls' Lacrosse Club teammates at a Maryland tournament in November 2008, was diagnosed with leukemia when she was 11. Her diverse background has made her incompatible with any of the 7 million bone marrow donors on the Be a Match Registry.

by Justin Feil | Special to Lacrosse Magazine Online

Taylor Matt needs a hero.

Fifteen minutes on www.marrow.org and a Q-tip swab of the cheek later, and it could be you getting her back to the game of lacrosse that she has loved since fifth grade.

Taylor is a 17-year-old from just outside Syracuse, N.Y. She is a senior who was a tenacious defender last year for the Cazenovia High girls’ lacrosse team that reached the state Section III Class C semifinals. She is looking forward to helping the Lakers go for the championship this spring, but isn’t sure she will get that chance.

In August, Taylor was diagnosed with Acute Myelogenous Leukemia and everything normal about her senior year was put on hold.

“It’s a bummer,” said Taylor, who also plays for the ethix Girls’ Lacrosse Club in Syracuse. “It’s going from one world to another. I’m here and this is what I have to do.”

She has been in Upstate Golisano Children’s Hospital in Syracuse ever since her diagnosis and already has undergone two rounds of chemotherapy, but what she really needs is a bone marrow transplant to stop the leukemia from returning forever. Her leukemia had been in remission after she was first diagnosed at 11.

“I had an appointment in June 2009 and I was completely fine,” Taylor said. “I had to come back in a couple months. In August, I knew something was wrong with me.”

Please click here for the full article at US Lacrosse.