Sue Lloyd-Roberts, a BBC journalist who has an aggressive form of leukaemia, has announced she has found a stem cell donor who could save her life.
She tweeted:
I have a donor! He/she a good match so set fair for return to hospital in 2 weeks. Thanks so much to all donors and all tweeted good wishes.
— sue lloyd-roberts (@suellr) July 5, 2015
On her blog, she said she had received the news in intriguing circumstances while at Westminster Abbey.
“Ever since this began, my Roman Catholic friends have been reciting novenas and lighting candles and my Buddhist friends have been chanting and lighting incense sticks and I had sort of forgotten the denomination into which I was baptised, the C of E. Desperate enough to try anything, I touched the tomb of Edward the Confessor and lit a candle in the Abbey and “ping” went my phone – a message from the hospital that I had a donor. So, there’s proof – Henry VIII and archbishop Cranmer are vindicated. The Anglicans have it!”
The BBC hosted an open day last month to encourage potential stem cell, or bone marrow, donors to come forward after Lloyd-Roberts missed out on a transplant when a previous candidate failed a medical. She was told there were four more possible donors, who would have to go through tests to see whether they were a match.
Lloyd-Roberts, an award-winning journalist who mostly covers foreign affairs, first realised something was wrong in January. She wrote that she was loading the dishwasher at the hotel she runs with her husband, the BBC producer Nick Guthrie, in Mallorca when she collapsed.
“I am a doctor’s daughter and the rule drummed into 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 donor with the same tissue type as hers so she could have a stem cell transplant. On 11 May she wrote that an overseas donor had confirmed he was willing and able to help.
She followed doctors’ orders to eat a lot in order to put on weight before the transplant, but was told later that the donor had not passed his medical.
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.”
Lloyd-Roberts has worked for both the BBC and ITN. She was the first reporter into Homs, Syria, smuggled into town in the back of a car. In China she was sentenced in her absence to seven years in prison for some of her reporting. She was one of the first to talk about female genital mutilation.
The blood cancer charity Anthony Nolan, which has been trying to match a donor, said: “This week, Sue received the brilliant news that a new matching donor has been found just in time for her to have a lifesaving transplant … she is now due to have her transplant later in the month.”
