Adam’s Story

Adam’s parents share his journey starting on the 21^st October 2019 in Daisy Hill Hospital in Newry, Adam at the age of 7 years old was diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukaemia, AML. Four rounds of intense chemotherapy in The Royal Victoria Hospital for Sick Children in Belfast were completed in Feb 2020 and remission was achieved, unfortunately in December 2020 it was discovered the Leukaemia was back.

More Chemo was given but was never going to get rid of this disease completely so the only option with a hope of curing Adam was for Adam to get a stem cell transplant or as others call it a bone marrow transplant.  Traditionally the marrow would be taken from a sibling (which as an only child Adam didn’t have) or it would come from a non-related donor match that is on one of the 2 donor registers.

Our initial aim was to get Adams disease level low enough to head to Bristol for a traditional Bone marrow transplant, however with Adam’s difficult to treat leukaemia this wasn’t possible, and the outcome was looking bleak. That is until we found Dr Rob Wynn from The Royal Manchester Children’s hospital who offered Adam a Cord Blood Transplant.

It was this Cord Blood Transplant that Adam got on 5th May 2021.  The cells from an umbilical cord of a British baby girl born in 2016 had been kept and frozen.  These cells were an 8 out 8 match to the genetics Adam required, the cells were defrosted and medically prepared and transfused into Adams body. Hoping they would go in and destroy the nasty leukaemia cells that’s the chemotherapy couldn’t. As a family we spent a total of 12 weeks in Manchester under the watchful eye of Dr Rob before returning home to Adam’s Belfast based team.

In October 2021, just 3 months after returning home from his cord blood transplant it was discovered that Adams transplant had failed, and the leukaemia would be returning.  The plan at this stage was to make a return to Dr Rob and the team in Manchester for a second Cord Blood Transplant but unfortunately Adam’s disease levels never allowed this to happen.