Jordan, 3, Wishaw, Lanarkshire, Scotland
‘'We don’t know who donated their cord blood for Jordan, so we can’t thank them – in fact there are no words to thank the woman who did this for us, she gave my child the gift of life. She probably doesn’t even know what she’s done or what it means to us. I think everyone should donate their cord blood – it’s a tiny bag of liquid gold and it saved my son’s life. It’s so simple.
''In August 2005 when Jordan was only ten weeks old, I noticed that he’d developed a rash and a wee lump on his head. I really didn’t think anything was wrong but I took him to the doctor just in case.
''The hospital thought initially that it might be meningitis but half an hour later they told me it was leukaemia. My grandfather had been diagnosed the week before with leukaemia and the doctors had told him there was nothing they could do. I just thought Jordan would die.
''They said that because Jordan was so young he only had a 10% chance of survival.
''Our only hope was a bone marrow transplant and they started chemotherapy on Jordan immediately. The chemo was successful though, and Jordan went into remission straight away. By that Christmas they’d found a donor. I can’t describe how that felt, we were ecstatic – over the moon. Jordan had his transplant and we were able to take him home in August.
''We’d been living at the hospital for a full year.
''By early 2007 everything was back to normal.
''Then in the February, Jordan developed a high temperature. The hospital had said to bring him in if he had a temperature – I wasn’t worried though, I just thought it was a bug. But I was wrong: the leukaemia was back.
''There were no matches but we knew that my unborn baby might be a match. In fact, even though there is only a one in four chance of siblings being a match, I was absolutely convinced that my new baby would be – he was our only hope.
''Joshua wasn’t a match for Jordan. It felt absolutely terrible. But within literally a few hours the consultant came back and said she’d been checking the international registers and found a cord blood match in Barcelona. We went from absolute rock bottom to having hope again within a matter of hours. We were completely over the moon.
''Jordan had his transplant in 2007. We thought he’d be very unwell after as he was after the previous transplant, but he was fine – he just bounced back immediately. I couldn’t believe it. Now, ten months later, he’s still fine – a cheeky little three year old. We haven’t had the one year all clear yet, but we’re very hopeful.''
