At 17 years old, Jayden Lutz was days away from starting university when his dad got a call that changed everything. Sitting in Subway, with Taylor Swift’s “Bad Blood” ironically playing in the background, Jay learned that he had leukemia.

“Get to VGH as soon as possible,” the caller said.

That same day, Jay was admitted into the Leukemia/Bone Marrow Transplant (LBMT) Program at VGH. His white blood cell count was around 400 – much higher than the normal range of 4-11.

“So, the doctors immediately knew this was progressing quickly, and they started hitting me with chemo right away,” he said.

Eventually, his oncologist informed him that – due to the severity of his cancer – chemotherapy alone wasn’t going to be enough. He would need a bone marrow transplant.

The problem was: his parents and brother weren’t ideal matches. As the weeks and months went by, the team searched far and wide for a suitable donor.

But those efforts proved fruitless.

He was running out of options – until his doctors informed him of experimental treatments and research being done for Haploidentical transplants from a non-perfect match.

When he got home from the hospital that day, he asked his parents to stay in the car for a few minutes while he went inside to talk to his younger brother, Devon. Jay knew Devon wasn’t comfortable with anything medical – not even the dentist. But he had to ask him if he’d be his donor. 

“He was like, ‘Absolutely, I’ll do it. Tell me where and when,’” Jay recalled. “That was such a special moment for us.”

On February 2, 2016, five months after his initial diagnosis, Jay became one of the first recipients of the Haploid transplant method at VGH. It’s a day he now calls his second birthday – or his second chance day.

“And I’m so grateful to have that second chance.”

Nowadays, Jay is living a “pretty normal life.” He’s married, working full-time, and recently completed his university degree. Grateful for the care he received at VGH, Jay’s family made a generous $1 million donation to the recently-launched Hematology Research Unit at VGH – a key milestone in VGH & UBC Hospital Foundation’s Greater Than Cancer fundraising campaign.

The Hematology Research Unit is BC’s first dedicated inpatient clinical trials unit, giving patients with no other options access to new life-saving therapies – without ever having to leave the province. 

“It gives me hope that people like Tyler, people like Brandon, and people like Nolan might have a chance,” Jay said, referencing three friends he’s lost to blood cancers. “That there might be an emerging study, that there might be a new treatment, that is made available that would allow them to live their lives and have that second chance.”

Just like it did for Jay.

A gift of gratitude 

Dave Jones poses for a photo in the new Hematology Research Unit at VGH, made possible in part by a $600,000 donation from his Windsor Plywood Foundation.

The Hematology Research Unit was funded almost entirely by a total of $5 million in philanthropic support through VGH & UBC Hospital Foundation. Among the group of donors was the Windsor Plywood Foundation, who contributed $600,000 and made the very first gift towards the unit.

They, too, were inspired by exceptional care provided by the LBMT program at VGH, says Dave Jones, son of Windsor Plywood Foundation founders, Fran and Randle Jones, and a former patient himself.

Dave was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia in February 2023, ending up in his local hospital on Valentine’s Day. Within a couple days, he was transported to VGH, which provides care for all adults in BC and the Yukon who require a bone marrow transplant and 80% of adults with acute leukemia.

“I was in bad shape,” Dave recalled.

After two rounds of chemo, doctors confirmed that a stem cell transplant was his only chance at survival. He received the transplant in May, after three months of treatment. There were many hard days, but through it all, Dave found solace in the care he received at VGH – and in the breathtaking views from the LBMT unit on the 16th floor of Jim Pattison Pavilion, where the North Shore Mountains rise above Vancouver’s cityscape.  

“It was like the Hyatt,” Dave said of the floor often referred to as T16. “People pay real money for that view.”

“And the care is second to none,” he added. “If anyone ever says to me, ‘The health care that we’re getting in our province is not great,’ they’re wrong.”

Today, Dave is thriving as a healthy outpatient, cherishing life, and filled with gratitude. This donation is his family’s way of giving back.

“Of course, everybody hopes they’ll come up with a cure someday,” Dave said. “Leukemia and all the blood cancers aren’t going anywhere, and more work needs to be done … To be quite honest with you, when I was laying on the bed during my journey, I just hoped to live and be well. But at the end, I just had to give back. I just had to.”

With your support, we are Greater Than Cancer. Learn more about how you can help advance cancer care in BC: vghfoundation.ca/GreaterThanCancer.