Hi, thanks for looking at our page!

We’re going to be walking a marathon to raise money for Anthony Nolan on the 31st May 2021.
Up until then we will be doing some test/practice walks which we will be documenting on our social media’s!

Anthony Nolan is a charity that helps to save the lives of people with blood cancer and blood disorders.
In order to do this, they make connections between those with blood cancer and people who have signed up to donate stem cells in the event that they are a match.

My story (Ella):
In March 2012 when I was 7 and my brother was 3 my dad, Peter, began to get stomach pains and tooth ache - the sort of things that you’d brush off as being nothing. However, by May these pains had not improved and so  he went to the doctors where they conducted blood tests. These showed that there was something seriously wrong but they didn’t know exactly what. After two weeks the cause of the problem was found - not within his stomach, but within his bone marrow.
Within days he was admitted to the haematology ward and was diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukaemia.
The treatment for this disease is chemotherapy, and in most cases, a stem cell transplant is needed in order for a patient to have any chance of survival.
My dad was told that without a stem cell transplant that his odds of becoming cancer free was around 10%, but with a successful stem cell transplant this would be much higher.

Amazingly, Anthony Nolan were able to find two donors who were good matches for my dad, one of these was available in the time frame needed.
They organised the donor, the donation, the transfer of the stem cells from Germany, and then the final transfer to the hospital.

The bone marrow successfully took and there were no more signs of leukaemia!
Unfortunately, my dad did get one of the potential side effects called ‘graft vs host disease’ - this is where the new cells reject the body that they have been put in and begin to attack it - to counteract this, immunosuppressant drugs had to be used. This left his body vulnerable to infection.
At this time a virus attacked his body and his immune system was unable to fight it off. In the end the virus attacked his body so much that it caused his death.
My dad passed away on 19th March 2014 after a 2 year battle with leukaemia.

Despite the outcome of my dads illness, the bone marrow transplant that was made possible by Anthony Nolan gave him the chance of a longer life to experience with us, his family. We are grateful that he was given the opportunity to have this lifesaving treatment, without this my dad would have had almost no chance of survival and would’ve passed away much sooner.

In the last year Anthony Nolan helped over 1,300 people receive a lifesaving stem cell transplant.

Stem cell transplants are the only known cure for blood cancer. Anthony Nolan gives people a chance at life.

        •       In the last year (during the pandemic) Anthony Nolan charity has lost out in £500,000 worth of fundraising.
        •       It takes £40 to add each new donor to the stem cell register (laboratory work and tests carried out to analyse the DNA)
        •       Without this vital funding, new lifesaving matches for those with blood cancer cannot be found

Please consider donating what you can to save the lives of people like Ella’s dad.
You can be a lifesaver.


Thank you for reading and supporting!
Ella & Immy