Margot was one of 1,800 people in the UK this year in desperate need of a life saving bone marrow /stem cell transplant.

C’mon lads. Step up.

There are more than 37,000 people worldwide. 

Please click the above image & download your own copy to print and post in your rugby club. Thank you.

Awareness around the need for more donors is poor, which is astonishing when you consider that every 20 minutes someone in the UK is diagnosed with blood cancer.

Increasingly, bone marrow transplants are being used as life saving solutions for more than just blood disorders, so there is and will continue to be an ever increasing need for stem cell / bone marrow donors.

You can get started straightaway online and have a DIY kit sent to you – see: ‘How to Register‘. It’s a simple process and you return your DIY kit by post. Once on the register, on average you have about a 1 in 1,200 chance of being asked to actually donate. Your own bone marrow regenerates within about 10 days post harvest. Harvest is relatively straightforward and will have little / minimal impact on your life.

And if you actually donate, you know that you’re likely to be saving someone’s life, or at least gifting them more time with their family and loved ones.

You can save a life.

Margot eventually found her donor match but unfortunately too few ever succeed in finding one: only 50% of people with a blood cancer ever find their matching donor.

It needn’t be this way…

As a result of Team Margot’s efforts to date, statistically there will be over 500 people who will now have the option of a donor match that could potentially save their life.

We hope you can join us in saving more lives.

Thank you.

x

p.s. the donor / recipient process is anonymous, certainly for the first two years post transplant. We were permitted to write to Margot’s donor and did so in April 2014, the day before Margot left Hospital to come home after 8 weeks in isolation (see below).

One day, we hope to meet him.

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Our letter to Margot’s anonymous donor

To the gentleman that selflessly and benevolently donated his bone marrow to someone else in their time of need…

You were there for a little girl who was quite suddenly taken ill and found herself in desperate need of a stem cell donor match, in order to stand the best chances of beating her blood cancer.

You are our hero.

We feel this way in spite of knowing very little about you. However, that you thought to take the time to register as a potential stem cell donor and made good on your commitment when our call came, speaks volumes for who you are as a human being.

Today, tests show that our little girl has 100% of your stem cells in her bone marrow, which means the bone marrow transplant was successful.

We are told that she is now ‘disease free’ and are looking forward to her coming home soon, making a full recovery and living a healthy and complication free life hereafter.

You have given her a second chance at life; we are all unspeakably grateful to you for this miraculous gift and one day, we very much hope to meet you.

Yours in admiration, from the fortunate and humbled parents, brothers, cousins, uncles and aunts, grandparents, great grandparents and friends:

Thank you.

9 April 2014

VIDEO: Register & be a Team Margot SuperHero