Three and a half years ago, our lovely dad (Baba) was diagnosed with a bone marrow condition called myelofibrosis. He had a rare and aggressive form of myelofibrosis with a prognosis at the time of 18 months. His doctors told him that his only chance of cure was a stem cell transplant.

Luckily, our amazing uncle was a match and 9 months later donated his stem cells to Baba. After a rocky 3 years, he is now doing incredibly well and we feel so grateful to have just been able to celebrate another Christmas with him and our mom!

Unfortunately, not everyone is as lucky to find a match through family and 75% of patients have to use an unrelated donor. Furthermore, only 72% of white Northern European patients find their match on the register, and this falls to 37% for those from Minority Ethnic Backgrounds (like our Baba).

Liverpool Marrow is the University of Liverpool’s student run branch of the Anthony Nolan Charity, which works to save the lives of people with blood cancer. Last year, Anthony Nolan helped 1270 patients receive a stem cell transplant, and continued to conduct their pioneering research into stem cell donation during the pandemic.

Liverpool Marrow’s main aims are to:

- Sign up potential donors to the stem cell register

- Raise vital funds for Anthony Nolan to continue their work

- Raise awareness of blood disorders/cancers, and the stem cell transplant process

We know that we have been extremely lucky with our situation, so we want to help support those less fortunate who were in our Baba’s position. On Sunday 27th March, we will be running the Wolves 10K in Wolverhampton to raise money for Liverpool Marrow and we would be so grateful if you could spare a few pennies to support us! None of us are particularly athletic so we will be posting updates of how the training is going.

If you’d like to find out more about Liverpool Marrow’s work, or have any questions about signing up to be a donor, please get in touch!

Lots of love,

Farah, Sousan and Sara xxx