Just after having moved to Dubai 6 years ago my dad was diagnosed with Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma, a form of cancer. It was caught late. In fact the latest stage having already spread to other organs such as his spleen. After numerous failed treatments over 4 years, with my dad often in the UK by himself to try and give us a settled childhood, the decision was taken to return to the UK and have an allogeneic stem cell transplant (using the stem cells of another individual). This procedure has a high risk of mortality within the first year, almost 30%. The first year was frankly awful. He suffered badly from GVHD, which left an itchy rash across his body. He was in hospital numerous times with infections due to his new compromised immune system. The second year was much improved and he was able to come totally off his suppressants. At which point in November last year he was able to return to work. However, shortly after the Christmas holidays with his bag packed to go to South Africa he was taken to hospital with stomach pains and later tested positive for chicken pox. In a low risk ward he suffered multiple organ failure. The staff on call were able to revive him but by this point he had suffered irreparable brain damage.  After just over a week on life support the decision was made to turn off the machines. 

In his memory I am going to be running the 2012 Edinburgh Marathon to raise funds for the Anthony Nolan Trust. The Anthony Nolan Trust provides matches for those requiring a lifesaving stem cell operation primarily being Lukemia Patients.  This charity enabled my dad to watch me play rugby religiously each Saturday home or away , teach me to drive and drop me off at university. All things every dad should be able to do.  However, they can currently only find matches for half the people that require them, which just isn’t good enough.

Anthony Nolan has therefore three main aims for 2014:

·             Grow the register to include 1 million potential donors 

·             Meet 80% of transplant requests

·             Bank 15,000 umbilical cord blood units

If they can achieve those three main aims, they’ll be able to save twice as many lives.

This is where we can play a part in two ways.

1. Firstly and what I would like most to achieve is to grow the register. To everyone who is between 18 and 40 you can sign up to be a donor like me. To become part of the register you only need to give a small saliva sample, which can be done at home and takes no time at all. If you're then found to be a match at some point in time you then have the opportunity to save a life.

http://www.anthonynolan.org/What-you-can-do/save-a-life/Online-application.aspx

It is a lifelong commitment to be a donor and therefore you have to be sure that you're fully comfortable with it as it costs them over £100 to process each application so you have to make sure you fully understand what's involved.

http://www.anthonynolan.org/What-you-can-do/save-a-life/What-happens-if-you-are-a-match.aspx

2. You can also help by sponsoring me to complete the marathon.

To give you some idea of how your money can help:

£10 is the average cost of a saliva sample kit. Saliva samples tell us whether a potential donor is a match.

£20 could help towards the cost of storing a potentially lifesaving cord blood sample.

£50 could help towards the cost of recruiting a new potential donor to our register and testing their tissue to find out if they are a match.