My Adelle was always a daddy’s girl and from the moment she was born, she had me wrapped around her gorgeous little finger.
As a kid, she loved singing so we used to perform songs together – I did Gareth Brooks and she did Taylor Swift. To say we – my wife Leanne and I – doted on her and her twin brother Aaron is an understatement. I lived to make her smile.
But in the blink of an eye they were teenagers and Adelle was 13-going-on-30, always bossing me and her brother about. She had a smart retort for everything; her mum Leanne joked we bonded by bickering. If anything we were too similar.
She kept that wise head on her shoulders in March 2018 when, just before her 16th birthday, she was diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukaemia (AML).
She’d been very prone to tonsillitis and it turned out to be a sign that her immune system wasn’t working properly. After a particularly bad bout, which didn’t get better with antibiotics, our GP sent us to hospital and blood tests found the cancer.
Me and Leanne were in bits but our girl was so brave, telling us not to worry, she’d fight it and it would all work out. The reality was everything was far from OK.
AML is aggressive and deadly, and the doctors told us early on there would be a fight. She was initially put on a trial with a combination of several different chemotherapy drugs but that didn’t work.
Just three months later were were told her only hope of long-term survival was a bone marrow transplant.
Adelle was put on palliative care and we were told she was going downhill. To see my girl fading away was soul destroying. I was at her bedside for every appointment, every scan, I didn’t let her out of my sight.
Me, Leanne, Aaron, and her older sister Rebecca, now 22, were all tested to see if we could give her some of our bone marrow and I pinned my hopes on being a match.
I felt if anyone should save our girl, it should be me. Her dad. She’d always been a daddy’s girl and I was over-protective at times – if they were two minutes late off the school bus I was panicking. But this was the only thing I couldn’t protect her from and I just felt so useless.
When the results came back after a three-week wait none of us were a match for her. That was absolutely devastating; we felt so helpless. We’d started her on a healthier diet and we hoped that would buy her some time. All our friends and family had her in their prayers.
Then at the end of August 2018, a miracle happened. An anonymous donor was found through the DKMS organ donor register and Adelle was flown to the Bristol Royal Infirmary for tests and chemo to wipe out her remaining immune cells. On 15 October 2018 she underwent the transplant, which is similar to a blood transfusion.
The stakes were high. If it didn’t work she had no more chances. But if it did, her cancer could be cured. By 16 November we knew that it had worked and Adelle had been given her life back.
The donor system is anonymous so we were never able to thank the stranger who gave Adelle that second chance. She was still recovering from all the chemo but she was free from the leukaemia.
Words can’t express what they did for us. They basically gave Adelle 2019. They gave her her 17th birthday. They gave us family time we’d never have had.
She had a healthy happy year, during which she even participated in Children in Need’s Rickshaw Challenge, helping to raise over £8million for charity.
She was one of six people who covered over 400 miles from Holyhead in Wales to the studio in London – a cycle that took them eight days.
We can never really do justice to the magnitude of what that person did for our family.
I was so touched that I signed onto the DKMS register myself, hoping to be able to give that gift of life to someone else. Adelle thought that was really cool, she was buzzing.
Tragically, in March 2020 Adelle’s cancer returned and her doctors told us there was nothing more they could do. We were told a second bone marrow transplant wasn’t possible.
I sat by her bedside during those final days; looking out of the window and seeing shapes in the smoke coming from the hospital chimney.
I never left her side. I wouldn’t budge. I wouldn’t leave my girl.
Adelle passed away in July 2020, aged just 18. She left a hole in our lives that could never be filled.
In the months that followed me and Leanne were numb with grief, trying to get through each day for Aaron and Rebecca’s sake – as well as their younger brother Carter, now 13. Aaron especially was lost without his twin.
In the fog of our grief I’d forgotten all about the DKMS register until – out of the blue – in November I got a phone call.
They told me I’d been matched with someone. They couldn’t give me any details, but someone out there needed my help.
I could change a life… just like Adelle’s donor had done for us.
I was so choked up I could hardly speak. I was nodding at the phone. It felt like a sign from heaven.
In January 2021, I flew from our home in Co Antrim to an English clinic for tests. After a nervous couple of weeks, they confirmed I was fit to donate.
My donor day came in February. Getting on that plane again felt like going to my destiny. The actual process of making the donation took about four hours and there was no pain.
It was similar to giving a blood donation, but with a needle in each arm. Blood is drawn out of one arm and fed into a cell harvesting machine, where the stem cells are taken. Then it is returned to the body via the other arm.
It was so emotional, I cried pretty much the whole day afterwards. It was unreal, knowing I’d actually done it.
My donation was anonymous so I’ll never know whether it was successful or who I helped. But that doesn’t matter.
Just knowing that I’ve been able to give another family hope, in the same way that someone out there did for my family, is the best tribute I can think of to our Adelle’s memory.
Aaron says that Adelle didn’t die young, she just lived fast. Now it’s up to us – her family – to continue living each day for her.
As told to Jade Beecroft
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source https://metro.co.uk/2021/03/10/a-strangers-stem-cells-gave-my-daughter-an-extra-year-of-life-14182201/
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