A woman is in a race against time to find her estranged dad who she hopes will be able to give her a life-saving transplant.
Sarah Langdale suffers from severe aplastic anaemia (SAA), where the body doesn’t produce enough new blood cells and needs needs a bone marrow donor.
Her condition used to be manageable with medication but it inexplicably got significantly worse in 2019, and she has gone downhill since.
The 32-year-old relies on blood and platelet transfusions every 28 days with doctors saying she urgently needs a transplant before it gets worse.
Sarah has never met her father but is forced to hope him or her half-siblings could be a match and would donate marrow.
The only thing she knows about her dad, is that he lived near her childhood home in Northampton, when she was born thirty years ago.
Sarah works as a barber and lives in Rugby, Warwickshire, she said: “It’s quite something searching for your dad, and very emotional when doing so could save your life.
“It’s very difficult and overwhelming. I’ll die without the transplant, but I know virtually nothing about my dad, and I’m relying on someone seeing my story and coming forward with information.
“I can only live in hope.”
She was initially diagnosed with SAA when only two, and her symptoms worsened over the Covid-19 pandemic.
A tiny knock turns Sarah’s bruises black, and when she has a cut or period, she keeps bleeding.
Because of this, she receives three units of blood every 28 days and relies on medicines to stop her periods.
On top of that, she suffers from extreme fatigue and heart palpitations as well as headaches, nausea and a depressed immune system.
She said the doctors at King’s College Hospital in London and Coventry and Warwick University Hospital explained the transplant would give her a 'new normal' and would allow her to live without all her previous treatments.
Sarah’s mum Lorraine doesn’t know anything about her biological dad, and there is a very small chance, about one percent, that a parent may be closely matched with their child, and can be used in the same manner as a matched sibling.
However, a brother or sister is most likely to be a match - a 1 in 4 chance.
“The transplant wouldn’t just save my life, it would give me normal energy levels," she said.
"I don’t know what that feels like.
“I’m young and I just want to go out and live my life, but I can’t. It’s really tough.”
