Adrian Sudbury meets Prime Minister Gordon Brown in the House of Commons _320
A TERMINALLY ill former University of Liverpool student has met with the Prime Minister – as part of his bid to boost the number of British bone marrow donors before he passes away.
Journalist Adrian Sudbury, who will die of leukaemia in weeks, met Gordon Brown to plead for a national campaign in schools to educate young people about registering as donors.
Adrian, aged 26, works for Trinity Mirror, which publishes the Liverpool Daily Post, as a digital journalist for the Huddersfield Examiner.
“The biggest misconception about being a donor is that it in-volves a lot of pain when in real-ity it’s not dissimilar to having a blood transfusion,” said Adrian, who lived off Smithdown Road when studying physiology in Liverpool 1999 to 2002.
“I love Liverpool, it’s fantastic and I get back as much as I can ‘cos I’ve still loads of friends there. In fact going back to Waver-tree is one of the things I have promised to do before I die.”
Adrian first revealed there was “no hope left” on his award-winning website baldyblog which traced his 18-month battle against a rare form of the cancer. In that time he received a bone marrow transplant from a matching donor, but it failed and Adrian decided against any further treatment.
He resolved that in the time he had left he would try to get more donors so that others would have a better chance of survival.
“I have had 18 months of this knew the risk involved so what-ever happened to me, good or bad, I was going to raise awareness as much as possible. From the re-sponses, it seems to be working,” said Adrian, who admitted that he was “feeling a little tired” and now wanted to spend his final days with family and friends.
Ruth Carter, regional fund-raising organiser for bone mar-row campaigners, The Anthony Nolan Trust, said thousands of Merseysiders had signed the register in the last couple of years.
“Out of those, five or six have been chosen as donors, but it is a high number when you think only a couple of thousand are found yearly from a worldwide register,” said Ms Carter, whose husband Michael, is a successful donor.
“It means that you could make your donation in Liverpool and someone on the other side of the world could benefit from it.”
That’s what happened recently in reverse to eight-year-old Faye Lafferty, from Huyton. She needed a transplant to combat aplastic anaemia, a rare disorder which stops production of blood cells in her bone marrow. A 32-year-old Australia man was found on the register, and Faye’s operation will take place at Alder Hey Hospital.
The Trust hopes Adrian’s cam-paign will give a better chance of a donor being found for a little brother and sister from South-port, Ella and Sam Wright, who suffer from a life-threatening immune deficiency. “By register-ing you could produce a life-saving legacy in memory of Adrian,” said Ms Carter.
LOG on to Adrian’s blog – www.baldyblog.freshblogs.co.uk
