Pen pals … Mick Davidson has corresponded with the recipient of his stem cells for twenty many years. Photograph: Christopher Thomond for the Guardian
Someplace in London is my best match. He is effectively-developed, a 12 months older than me, well-known with my friends and family members – a real hero. We have in no way met.
He is my stem cell donor, a 10/10 fit for my blood tissue sort, according to our human leukocyte antigen (HLA) – the unique “barcode” we each and every have on our immune system’s cells – which makes it possible for the physique to distinguish itself from foreign bodies so it can fight invading organisms.
When I was diagnosed with large-danger leukaemia last February, I was informed that I would want a stem cell transplant. My bone marrow could not be trusted to create cells on its personal – the total system required to be wiped out, deleted with high-dose chemotherapy and radiation, and essentially replaced with a new hard drive. With no a transplant of a person else’s cells, my medical doctor explained, there was a 60% possibility that the leukaemia would return, and possibly kill me.
Following my sister was tested and found incompatible (siblings are a match in only about thirty% of cases), the hospital commenced browsing the Anthony Nolan charity’s bone marrow register for a donor. I was lucky – a month later, I was advised that a match had been discovered: a 24-12 months-old “chunky lad”.
Apart from his age and robust physique, I do not know anything at all about him. In two years’ time, as lengthy as I am nonetheless in remission, I’ll be permitted to meet him – if he agrees. Till then, donors and recipients can only exchange quick, anonymous messages. But in the meantime, I can’t aid feeling curious about this total stranger whose blood is now flowing through my veins, whose DNA and blood group I now share (along with his Y chromosomes).
Hannah Watterson, 31, originally from County Armagh in Northern Ireland, has been questioning about her donor for many years – and she is about to meet him for the initial time. “I’m nervous,” she says. “I feel like I must know him, since he’s a part of me.” Diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 2003, Watterson underwent several years of chemotherapy. But right after a relapse in 2007, medical doctors warned her that a stem cell transplant was her only opportunity of survival. “I’d presently had as significantly chemo as they could give me. If I didn’t have the transplant, I would die.”
Her brother was not a match, but luckily a person else was – Gil Lewis, now 43, a warehouse supervisor in Coventry. Lewis had been on the register for 20 many years, right after signing up when a buddy was diagnosed with blood cancer. When he acquired a contact one particular day from Anthony Nolan, inviting him to a clinic in Harley Street, London, he did not hesitate. The process of drilling into his bone to harvest the stem cells from his marrow was, he says, “entirely painless” – the only side impact was some small backache. He even ran the London Marathon six months later, in support of Anthony Nolan.
Stem cells are frequently in the headlines, hailed as a miracle remedy of the potential. For numerous, they exist in a faraway land of test tubes and laboratories – but they are already employed in hospitals, and are very easily obtained from donors by means of a basic method, similar to providing blood.
It is one thing Mick Davidson, 58, from Northumberland, is aware of all about. As a taxi driver, he tends to make frequent hospital trips, carrying precious cargo: some of his passengers are volunteer couriers for Anthony Nolan, delivering bags of stem cells. Making certain they arrive on time is crucial, as they should be administered inside of 72 hrs of donation. But then, Mick has acknowledged about the lifestyle-conserving effect of stem cells for a long time, obtaining donated his very own 20 years ago to somebody on the other side of the globe.
“At the time, all we knew was that he was a youthful man from North America,” says Davidson, who signed up to the register soon after his aunt died of leukaemia. The recipient of his cells was Rob Kaufman, then a 23-12 months-old from Ohio who had from aplastic anaemia. 1 day Davidson received a letter thanking him for his act of generosity, to which he replied, starting an anonymous correspondence. “It snowballed from there, actually.” He 1st met Kaufman a couple of years later on, and the pair have been close pals ever because, sharing family holidays and celebrating milestones with each other – Davidson attended Kaufman’s wedding in 1999, and final summer their families met in Florida to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the transplant.
For approximately 1,800 men and women in the United kingdom each yr struggling from aggressive blood cancers and other haematological illnesses, a stem cell transplant is their only hope of a cure. But regardless of increases in donors on bone marrow registers, the NHS Stem Cell Strategic Forum reports that much more than 400 individuals a year are denied remedy merely since there is no match.
Anthony Nolan, which is this year celebrating forty years given that its basis, is calling for more people to sign up in the hope that a single day they can give matches for all. There is a specifically urgent need for far more donors from ethnic minorities, who are seriously beneath-represented on the register, that means that patients from these backgrounds only have a 40% possibility of finding a match.
Davidson says that donating his stem cells was the most rewarding choice he has ever manufactured, and he would encourage other individuals to signal up to be likely donors. “It could save someone’s life. And it could even change your daily life as properly. It truly is undoubtedly altered ours.”
• Uncover out more at anthonynolan.org/bethecure.
Stem cell donation: make a friend, save a existence
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