Theo's story
33 year old Theo was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukaemia in July 2024 and urgently needs a stem cell transplant.
About Theo
Theo's partner, Rebekah says, "Theo loves Guinness, the woods, writing, the sea, his mum’s dogs, raving, running, dance music, folklore, documentaries, telling funny stories and, more than anything, he loves his friends, family and partner. And we adore him. He has been through so much in life already, both the really good and the really bad, and just oozes optimism and light. And he cares so deeply about people, both those in his life and those he doesn’t know. He is also notorious for always being the first one on the dance floor and the last one up in the kitchen at the end of the night. He is quite simply delightful!
Diagnosed with AML
In late July 2024, Theo was admitted to hospital after three months of increasing fatigue and shortness of breath. He had also developed an unusual large lump on his neck. We knew he was unwell but never in a billion years would we have expected what happened next. Blood test results showed a serious problem in his bone marrow and the haematology team very quickly diagnosed AML - Acute Myeloid Leukaemia, one of the most aggressive and notoriously difficult-to-treat blood cancers there is. It was a devastating diagnosis and is still to this day hard to fully comprehend how quickly it all happened and how life threatening it all is. The day he went into hospital he had cycled 7 miles to work and 7 miles back!
Life with leukaemia
Leukaemia is a rollercoaster that we seriously just want to get off of. Theo has the best care team in the world and we couldn’t have been better looked after by the amazing nurses and doctors on the ward and in ambulatory care. But there are still huge ominous question marks that hover over every single thing. We don’t know when or how or even if he will be cured. We don’t know what life will look like the other side of leukaemia. From being initially diagnosed with a subtype of AML which had abysmal survival rates, to then being told he would be fine with chemotherapy only, to now realising that his disease is quite resistant and he will probably need a stem cell transplant, it’s been a wild and brutal journey already.
Finding a match
Stem cell transplants are an intense, life changing and potentially life threatening treatment. But he is strong and brave, and we know that if he goes through it, he has a chance of being cured of this terrible disease. One of the things that makes the treatment more dangerous is when a person does not have a full genetic match with the stem cells being transplanted. Theo’s siblings were tested, but were not a match, and so the team checked the stem cell donation registry for a match from an unrelated donor. Unfortunately, Theo does not yet have a full match on the registry. Doctors were surprised because he is a white male (of Polish and Anglo-Irish descent), and the ethnic make up of the stem cell donation registry is heavily skewed towards white donors. They assumed he’d have at least one match. But alas.
A race against time
So now, we are on a mission! A mission to get Theo matched. We know he must have matches out there, we just need to find them. Our friends and family have been incredible already, getting colleagues and schoolmates and strangers and more to sign up. We want to sign up as many people as is humanly possible to become registered stem cell donors — not only for Theo’s sake, but for every person affected by blood cancer. Every single registration might just save someone’s life and give a family like ours a reason to hope."