Some great news to ring in the New Year – Ellie White has been cleared by doctors to receive a life-saving bone marrow transplant in three weeks.

The six-year-oldHampstead girl has been fighting leukemia. In mid-December, her family was told there was a bone marrow match – amazing, because according to Hema-Quebec, finding a bone marrow match is as rare as winning the Lotto 6/49. There are over 15 million different combinations that need to match up for a transplant to take place.

She was not out of the woods, yet, though. Before she could undergo surgery, Ellie needed to take a test to show that there were not any remaining cancer cells in her body. If there were, she’d have to undergo another round of chemotherapy before getting the transplant.

But she didn’t have to go through all that: Ellie’s test came out clean.

She has been cleared by doctors to go ahead with the surgery.

“We just did a bloodwork and her numbers look amazing. Like, it was good news after good news after good news,” said her mother, Amanda Sokoloff. "It's a nice change of pace."

The donor, who is anonymous, will have their bone marrow extracted in Jan. 25 and Ellie will receive the transplant within 48 hours of donation.

Ellie will start a very intensive round of chemotherapy a week before.

“It’s so intensive, we have to give her a bath twice a day, and we can’t touch her without wearing gloves because the chemo can come through the skin,” said Sokoloff. The chemo is required to prepare Ellie's body to receive the bone marrow.

Sokoloff said Ellie was most excited on Friday to learn that results from testing earlier in the day finally allowed her to broaden her diet. Often, the food her body is able to process is rather restrictive.

"I said, 'you can have anything. Do you want me to get you pizza?'" said Sokoloff.

Her daughter had something else in mind: "No, I need pea soup from Snowdon Deli, Mommy," she said.

It's an order the Cote-des-Neiges restaurant was happy to fill. 

"If she comes in and requests it, even if it's not our daily soup, we'll make it for her," said Karen Armstrong, an employee of Snowdon Deli.

It's another sign of how many lives this six-year-old has touched - her fight has inspired a community. 

Ellie's story resulted in hundreds of people undergoing a swab test to see if they could be a possible match for her or another person in need of a bone marrow transplant.

The Children's Hospital, where Ellie is a patient, performs between 15 and 20 of these procedures every year. 

"The bone marrow is given like a transfusion, just like an IV, and the cells find their way to the bone marrow," explained Dr. David Mitchell, a pediatric hematologist who performs most of the transplants.

One of the risks is that Ellie's body could reject the marrow, and having a transplant doesn't guarantee the cancer won't come back. 

However, Mitchell says simply finding a match and having everything line up is already a huge feat. 

"Just the logistics, especially if you've got an unrelated donor, because you have to coordinate with someone who might be halfway around the world - so everything's got to fall into place," he added."

"It's like a blood donation," explained Laurent Paul Menard from Hema-Quebec. "You never know from whom you received, you never know to whom you're giving."