500 landmark for marrow registry

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/-/1/hi/wales/5310292.stm

Version 0 of 1.

Six people whose lives have become intertwined through the Welsh Bone Marrow Registry have met at a celebratory lunch in Cardiff.

The registry based at Pontyclun in south Wales was celebrating the 500th donor since its launch in 1989.

And for the first time in the UK three donors and the three recipients were there to help mark the occasion.

"It's simple, without him I wouldn't be here," said Craig Rankine, 22, a trainee supermarket manager.

Craig, from Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire, was two and a half when he first became ill with lymphoblastic leukaemia.

After his third relapse, doctors told Craig and his family that his only hope was a bone marrow transplant.

Exchanging letters

Luckily, Dyfed-Powys Police transport officer Mark Williams, 45 had already registered with the registry and was found to be a perfect match.

"I could not have had any more treatment because I had been ill for such a long time," said Craig.

"Mark's donation, although I didn't know it was his at the time, was my last hope."

Nine months after the operations, Craig relapsed again but then the bone marrow he had received "kicked in" and he began to recover, although his blood group changed from O negative to Mark's A positive.

The pair began exchanging letters and emails anonymously via the register, and finally met up two and a half years ago when they discovered Craig's brother was visiting an oil refinery very near where Mark and his family live in Pembroke Dock.

It turned out Dominic's donor lived 10 minutes from his grandparents

"He was practically passing my doorstep and so I suggested Craig came too. '

"It was a pretty emotional day - meeting up for the first time. It was almost like a first date. You didn't know what to say.

Now plan to stay in regular touch and Craig is considering a career in nursing rather than retail "because I want to give something back".

Another recipient at the celebration in Cardiff International Arena was Bristol hospital anaesthetist Dominic Hurford, 29.

Dominic, now an adviser to BBC's Casualty, also chose a career in medicine after he recovered from leukaemia with a transplant in 1993.

'Enormously stressful'

Dominic's parents are Welsh and although they moved to Bristol before he was born but he said "I consider myself Welsh".

Illness struck just as he was studying for GCSEs and he was immediately put onto chemotherapy and the family began hoping that a donor would be found.

"It was enormously stressful, waiting and hoping for a donor to be found," said Dominic. "I think every time we went to the hospital we would be waiting, and hoping."

Ironically, his donor found within six months turned out to be a woman who lived then 10 minutes away from his grandparents' house in Cardiff.

Karen Allen, 45, who now lives in Bridgend and works at the Welsh assembly, had been a blood donor for years before she gave bone marrow as well.

"I don't expect to get the call saying that they were going to use it so fast, It seemed such a remote chance," she said.

"I was apprehensive, a but wary, you didn't know what to expect."

Seven years later the pair came face-to-face.

"It was strange. You've got an image in your mind and then he turned out to be anything like that, and I thought it was great he was studying medicine."

"It was so nice to see him fit and well."

Another pair brought together by the registry, which now has more than 51,000 registered donors, were also at Sunday's event.

But a similar reunion is unlikely as changes in 2002 mean that confidentiality of both donor and recipient is respected.