Daryl Albert Lam was born on March 29, 1998 in Toronto, Ontario, at 2 years old he was diagnosed with AHD in the Autism Spectrum. He was enrolled as a student at St Paul's Catholic School and on November 28, 2011 while in grade 8 he was diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukemia at the Hospital for Sick Children.
As a result, he had to be admitted and received 4 sessions of Chemotherapy while continuing classes - on the good days - and shortly after his 14th birthday he was able to achieve remission, discharged from the Hospital and continued with his treatment and schooling at home and finally being able to return to school in May 2012 just in time to graduate Junior High.
Daryl expressed a desire to follow in his older brother Dylan's footsteps and attend Neil McNeil High School, an application was made and he was accepted and arrangements made for him to start his Grade 9 year on the 4th September, 2012.
Unfortunately, on August 23, 2012 during a routine check up at HSC, Daryl's blood work results showed that the Leukemia blast cells had come back and were present both in his blood and his spinal fluid.
Because of the short duration of the remission before his relapse, the Doctors determined that Daryl's only chance of surviving made it necessary for him to receive a much more aggressive chemotherapy protocol with radiation to his head which would in effect kill all the cells in his blood and bone marrow while destroying the Leukemia cells, after which he will need a bone marrow transplant from an unrelated donor with as close to 10 of his HLA type markers
A search was done of over 19 million people in the global database but no match was found mainly because of the fact that due to his parentage he inherited a genetic makeup consisting of a mixture of all 6 of the races present in Guyana.
In fact, Daryl's genetics is so unique that even his Parents and his Siblings were not a match. As a result, his only chance is to find someone with genetics as close to his as possible which seems to be indigenous to members of the Guyanese community.
Despite all that Daryl has had to go through so far from the disease and medical procedures that ravaged his young body, he has remained positive and continues to be a source of joy and inspiration to his family, friends, staff at HSC and everyone he comes into contact with.