FORT COLLINS, Colo. — A Fort Collins family is celebrating a second chance at life after a son donated stem cells to his father, who was battling a stubborn and complex case of leukemia.
▶️ WATCH: Denver7's Ethan Carlson caught up with the father and son ahead of Father's Day
Wayne Sharrah was diagnosed in March 2024 after waking up in the middle of the night with a racing heart.
"About midnight, I woke up in the middle of the night, and my heart was absolutely pounding out of my chest, really hard, really fast, and I couldn't get it to slow down, and I, in the back of my mind, knew something was up," Sharrah said.
That episode led to a diagnosis of a pulmonary embolism, or a blood clot in the lung. It ultimately revealed an underlying case of leukemia. For his son Danny, the news was hard to process.
“Kind of shock. Like, he’s healthy, they are super active,” Danny Sharrah said. “How could this have happened to him?”
Wayne’s disease proved difficult to treat. Multiple rounds of chemotherapy and CAR-T immune-cell therapy were working, but the treatment revealed a second, more dangerous leukemia hiding in his bone marrow.
“We said, we have a big problem here, Wayne. We’ve got to do a complete stem cell transplant here. Your bone marrow is really, really heavily diseased,” Dr. Luke Mountjoy of the Colorado Blood Cancer Institute said.
Mountjoy searched an international donor registry but could not find a match.
"Both of my boys immediately stepped up and said, 'We'll be your donor,' and so I had to sort of make a choice," Wayne said. "There was nothing scientific about how I made the decision, but one of the differences between our two sons is that Danny hardly ever gets sick, so I had this gut instinct that said maybe there's something there that can help me. So, we chose Danny.”
Danny said the decision to donate was straightforward.
"From the minute we knew that we could do something about it, we were all gung ho about making sure that whichever one of us was chosen, it was going to be successful," Danny said.
By January 2025, just nine months after his diagnosis, Wayne was in remission. Mountjoy said his demeanor throughout the grueling process left a lasting impression.
“One of the things that I'll never shake is Wayne's attitude through it all… He was a trooper through the whole thing. The grace that he and his family had going through the thing was just one of the most impressive things about the whole story," Mountjoy said.
For Danny, seeing his father recover made everything worth it.
"He's one of my best friends. I don't know what I would do if he wasn't here. So, I'm eternally grateful that he's still here, and I'm able to make more memories of him," Danny said.
For Wayne, the experience gave him a new perspective on the relationship between a parent and a child.
"As a parent, you give everything to your kids, you never ever expect to take something from them, and here I am taking life from my son, and what an opportunity," Wayne said.
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