Tom Hurst was excited about playing golf in Nashville one summer day in 2006, only none of his friends were available to join him.
Tom, who works at Nashville Gas and lives in Murfreesboro, had gotten off work early that day and figured since he had some free time in Music City and no one to play golf with, he would have a problem on his leg checked.
"I said, 'Well I'll just go by and see my doctor to get something to take care of this rash,'" Tom remembers.
But the rash turned out to be a symptom of something far worse than Tom could have imagined: acute myeloid leukemia.
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None of his family members were a match, but a person he could identify at the time only as a "45-year-old female" because of privacy laws did match. On Saturday, Tom, now 55, and his family met the woman who saved his life for the first time at the Opryland Hotel in Nashville.
"It's been very emotional," said Kathy Walker, a 46-year-old school teacher from Nacogdoches, Texas, whose family traveled with her for the meeting. "They told him without a match, he would only live two weeks. He and his family are absolutely awesome people and overwhelmingly appreciative."
Kathy was able to be matched with Tom because she participated in a bone marrow drive a few years ago. The drive was created when a boy from a neighboring Texas town couldn't find a match for a bone marrow transplant
"It was once a very painful process," Kathy said of the former testing method that involved extracting marrow from the hip. "Now it's a simple mouth swab. It was really easy."
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