‘Husker fan with Michigan blood': Family, donor celebrate bone marrow transplant at Nebraska-Michigan game

While the Huskers and Wolverines face off Saturday on the football field, a Lincoln fourth-grader and Michigan OB-GYN will celebrate their connection — a life-saving bone marrow transplant.

“I’m a Husker fan with Michigan blood,” said Julia Morrison, the young recipient of the bone marrow transplant.

Tyler Morrison, Julia’s dad, said she started showing symptoms in February 2021. He and his wife took her to Children’s Hospital, and found out her bone marrow was not producing the blood she needed to survive.

She needed a transplant.

“As a parent, you look to do anything you can for your kids,” Tyler said. “We as a family, and Julia specifically, were down to really needing to rely on someone that we had never met, someone that was a complete stranger to us, that was on a registry list to give Julia what she needed to live.”

Tyler said it was a sigh of relief when they found a donor match for Julia, and they were able to set the transplant for that November.

That donor was Dr. Erica Brockberg, an OB-GYN in Michigan, who was completing her residency at the time. She said she joined the donor list after hearing from multiple recipients of bone marrow transfusions in a lecture during medical school.

“Of course, I joined right away,” Brockberg said. “Then, I ended up actually getting more involved in spreading awareness about how easy it is to join throughout medical school, through an organization called Wolverines for Life. It was something that kind of stuck with me throughout medical school, and then I was in residency for OB-GYN when I got the call that I was a match for Julia.”

Brockberg said when she got the initial call, she was pregnant, which meant she couldn’t donate right away. She was told if they hadn’t found another match, they would call her back when her baby was three months old.

“I remember the moment my son turned three months old and Be The Match popped up on my cell, and I knew that they needed me if they were calling back,” Brockberg said. “They said, ‘Listen, you're the only one.’ It was kind of a no-brainer, of course. I'm going to figure out a way to make this happen.”

Brockberg said it was both exciting and intimidating, but the recovery process went a lot smoother than she expected.

“I was back on my feet within a couple of days,” she said. “Now that I know the Morrisons, the contribution that I made seems so small compared to what they went through as a family and what Julia went through, I would definitely do it again in a heartbeat.”

For Julia, she spent months going from Lincoln to Omaha for weekly visits. She missed school and dance. Now, because of Brockberg’s donation, she gets to be a normal kid again.

“She’s my hero and my sister,” Julia said about Brockberg.

“She’s my bestie,” Brockberg said in agreement.

The two will be recognized during halftime alongside members of the bone and marrow transplant care team from the Fred & Pamela Buffett Cancer Center at Nebraska Medicine.

Gameday also happens to fall on World Marrow Donor Day. Members from the National Marrow Donor Program will be stationed on the west side of Memorial Stadium on Stadium Drive from 11:30 a.m. until kickoff at 2:30 p.m. for a cheek swab drive. Campus members and football fans between 18 years old to 40 years old in good health can register as potential donors.