The BBC is hosting an open day to encourage potential stem cell donors to come forward after one of its journalists, Sue Lloyd-Roberts, missed out on a transplant when her would-be donor failed a medical.
Lloyd-Roberts has aggressive leukaemia and needs a stem cell donation to save her life. “I continue to try to enjoy/endure this strange interlude in my life when I can’t go back to work because a hospital admission is always imminent and my movements are limited by hospital tests,” she wrote on her blog.
She has been told that there are now four more possible donors, but they must go through tests to see whether they are a match, which will take four to six weeks.
Lloyd-Roberts, an award-winning journalist who mostly covers foreign affairs, first realised something was wrong in January at the hotel that she runs with her husband, BBC producer Nick Guthrie, in Mallorca. She wrote in her blog that she was loading the dishwasher when she collapsed.
“I am a doctor’s daughter and the rule drummed in to me as a child is that you NEVER bother a doctor,” she said. “But Nick insisted. Four days later, I queued up at ‘Urgencias’ at a hospital in Palma. The blood test revealed a very low white blood cell count and I was admitted for more tests. The blood count kept falling, leaving me with severe neutropenia. A biopsy a week later suggested acute leukaemia.”
She flew back for treatment at University College Hospital in London, where she went through two rounds of chemotherapy as she waited for a stem cell donor. On 11 May she wrote that the donor, from overseas, had confirmed he was willing and able to help. She gladly obeyed doctors’ orders to eat a lot in order to put on weight ahead of the transplant.
But on 25 May there was disappointment. She wrote: “Heard from the hospital this morning that the donor has not passed his medical and so the cell transplant will not take place as scheduled. It could be that he had an infection, was found to be HIV positive or had worn his constitution down with too much beer, wurst und kartofel. I shall never know but I wish him well.”
She added that she might need another round of chemotherapy, but for the moment her platelet counts were too low.
Anyone between the ages of 16 and 30 can sign up to be a potential donor on the website of the blood cancer charity Anthony Nolan, www.anthonynolan.org. The BBC will hold the open day in conjunction with the charity at New Broadcasting House in London on 22 June.
