It’s an emotional meeting that the Dickeson family couldn’t quite put into words.

“How do you say thank you? He gave me my husband and he gave our two boys their dad back,” says Debbie Dickeson. “How do you say thank you for that outside of hugging him and thanking him?”

Alan Dickeson was diagnosed in 2000 with chronic myeloid leukemia.

“It affects your blood and you have no immune system so he had to go on chemo to get it under control,” says Debbie. “Then with Caleb’s cells, they were transplanted into Alan, and here he is.”

Caleb Dratch is a 22-year-old Ontario man who made a spur of the moment decision to offer his stem cells after passing a booth on his university campus.

“They set up a booth in a little heavy traffic area and they were trying to grab students to help populate their list,” says Dratch. “I was just walking by and they asked me if I had a moment to do a quick swab, and I just did that and filled out the paperwork and I was on my way.”

When Dratch called his parents to tell them he’d been matched with someone, they were reluctant to let him go through with it.

“We had a lot of questions at first,” says Dratch’s father, Neil. “We were worried about the medication that he was going to take. So we sat down and had a long discussion about it and Caleb was adamant it was something he wanted to do.”

When Dratch donated, he checked off the box that he’d be willing to allow his information to be released to whoever his cells were going to.

“When they sent in an application of request to release of information, they sent me a thing in the mail saying their initiating contact,” says Dratch. “Then you’ve got to send paperwork back, so it goes back and forth for a bit, but once everybody is on the same page then they send you their contact information so you can tell them.”

Dratch spoke with the Dickenson family on the phone, but Saturday was the first day they met.

“Words cannot explain it,” says Alan Dickeson. “I was glad to meet him.”

“Just to see that it’s just not about Debbie and Alan, but so many people that he’s affected, it’s wonderful,” says Dratch’s mother, Olga.

Alan is currently in remission. Both he and his family say having the opportunity to meet the young man who saved his life gives him more strength to keep fighting. 

With files from CTV Atlantic's Ashley Blackford.