Reece is a bright, happy 12year old young lad with a passion for life! He loves his football and his hero is Messi. But, sadly Reece is living with a life-threatening condition and is constantly in and out of hospital. He spends a large amount of his time in isolation for fear of infection and has limited contact with his friends as he cannot attend school. In 2013 Reece was constantly covered in bruises, his skin was almost transparent and he struggled to get through a school day. He was sent to see a consultant at Wexham Park and had the usual barrage of tests with a promise that the hospital would be in touch sometime in the next week or so. Later that evening the Consultant arrived at the family home and gave them the devastating news that Reece needed to be admitted to hospital immediately and that he was suffering from Severe Aplastic Anaemia, a rare and sometimes fatal disorder which affects the bone marrow resulting in a failure to produce sufficient blood cells. Following several courses of blood transfusions, platelet transfusions and two courses of ALD, which is similar to Chemotherapy, it was decided that Reece’s only option was a bone marrow transplant. It took four years to find a match for Reece but he finally had his transplant last August, weeks of Chemo to kill off his blood then a 12week hospital stay followed. And that should have been the end of it, Reece should have been cured and on his way to a normal, healthy, happy life. Sadly, that’s not what happened, during in the bone marrow transplant a rare disease called Thrombotic microangiopathy (TMA) was transferred and in Dec 2016 it was found to be sitting in his kidneys. In short this disease can attack Reece’s organs at any time and there is no cure. Already the aplastic anaemia is showing signs of return and cannot currently be treated because of the TMA. He is currently in hospital.
Reece has never been abroad and his dream is to go to Barcelona to see Messi play.