Blogger broadcasts bone marrow transplant on the web
Adrian Sudbury, a journalist from the Huddersfield Daily Examiner, is fighting a form of leukaemia thought never to have been seen before. To raise awareness and encourage more people to become donors, Adrian started a blog and uploaded videos of his preparations for the transplant as well as the final procedure.
“Being diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukaemia was devastating. It was a massive shock to me, my girlfriend, my family and colleagues. There isn’t much you can do from your hospital bed but I realised I might be able to raise awareness of bone marrow donation and show people what a bone marrow transplant actually looks like,” Adrian said.
After two cycles of chemotherapy failed, he was told that the only option is a bone marrow transplant. A 29-year old German woman was found to be a match and her marrow was couriered over from Germany to Sheffield’s Royal Hallamshire Hospital, where Adrian is being looked after.
The video of the transplant showed Adrian as he underwent the 40-minute procedure, and explained how as a result his blood group would change to that of the donor and he would need to go into isolation because his immune system would need to build itself from scratch.
“There are videos of the transplant online but we think this style of blog might be a bit of a first for the Internet. I hope the videos will raise awareness of bone marrow transplants and donation.” [Watch the videos through YouTube]
Blogging — in all its forms — is a fantastic way of sharing these kinds of experiences. Its hard to blog in the best of circumstances, and doing it while getting a bone marrow transplant — well, I think that’s nothing short of heroic.