REDONDO BEACH, Calif. -- Breakfast is underway at the Jacoby’s house. As Chris Jacoby tries to get his daughter off to school, he runs from task to task, working, cleaning, and packing her lunch.

But every now and then, he wanders into an empty bedroom.

“It’s such a cliché but part of us really is missing,” says Jacoby, staring at his son Ryan’s empty bed.

His wife is also gone. She is accompanying his son in the first of three 35-day stints at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles while the 7-year-old battles his second bout of acute myeloid leukemia.

The disease means that not even his twin sister can go out and play with him.

“The hardest part is seeing his life being disrupted, he’s an innocent little kid, and he doesn’t get to be a kid” said Jacoby.

His wife, breast-cancer survivor, is now living at the hospital with Ryan, making this the third time in the last five years that this family has had to battle the horrors of cancer.

Ryan’s best chance to beat this is to match with a bone marrow donor.   

“We are desperate, because we need a match, we need people to do the swab and register,” said Jacoby.

Desperate because Ryan is mixed, Vietnamese-Caucasian, and right now only four percent of those on the bone marrow registry are of a mixed background.

To better Ryan’s chances, he is asking every single person to go online at a3mhope.org or bethematch.org and register to become a donor. It’s a simple process, you answer some questions, get a cotton swab in the mail and get put on the list.

Choking back tears Jacoby talks about how much it would mean to him and his family if people sign up.

“Knowing that you did that has to be the most rewarding thing you can do. It would be for me and if you are the one who donates to save Ryan’s life, it would definitely be the most important thing to us and our family.”

After dropping his daughter off at school, Jacoby will make the hour-long trip to the hospital. He’s now working part-time, trying to hold on the family’s health insurance, while at the same time looking to spend every waking moment with his son.

“My acute hope is for Ryan to find a match and go through the treatment,” said Jacoby.

And when that happens, Jacoby's greatest hope is that Ryan will walk up to the counter at children’s hospital and ring the cancer-free bell one more time.