Alex Tung has spent almost every day of his life in the ocean, but something out of the blue changed everything.
"The ocean is everything to me, I love it," Tung said. "It's such a big part of my life, it's my escape."
But in June after a day of surfing, Tung went to the doctor when he noticed unusual bruises. The diagnosis, he said, was unimaginable.
"He explained to me this was due to an irregular growth of my white blood cells caused by leukemia," Tung said.
Tung has acute myeloid leukemia, a rare form of the blood cancer. His only chance for survival is a transplant from a bone marrow donor.
Doctors thought they found a match for Tung.
"But a few weeks later, they contacted me and told me that the five potential matches were all gone," he said.
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What makes his situation even more challenging is his Chinese ethnicity. For Asian Americans, the chances of finding a bone marrow match decrease dramatically.
"Asians represent only 7 percent of the entire 12 million donors," Tung said. "I didn't realize that."
That's compared to caucasians, which make up 65 percent of donors.
For now, Tung's mother is his closest match at 73 percent. But even that won't guarantee a successful transplant.
" I tell my son I'm your co pilot, no matter where you go, I'm going to go with you," Marjorie Lee said. "I'm going to go with you."
Both she and her son have confidence that a bone marrow match is out there somewhere.
"I don't believe it -- I know it," Tung said. "I have what I feel like the whole world trying to find my donor for me, and I feel like it's very close now."
Anyone who wants to help Tung can visit his YouCaring fundraising page, as well as the A3M donor match website.
