Brave Deryn ‘dumbfounds’ hospital staff

Martin George Monday, March 4, 2013
9:13 AM

A brave Watton teenager who is fighting one of the world’s rarest forms of cancer is continuing to defy doctor’s expectations two days after his bone marrow transplant.

Deryn relaxing in the isolation room he is confined to for at least three weeks after his transplant.

A brave Watton teenager who is fighting one of the world’s rarest forms of cancer is continuing to defy doctor’s expectations days after his bone marrow transplant.

Deryn Blackwell was diagnosed with leukaemia at 10 and the Wayland Academy pupil was told two years into his treatment he had relapsed and developed Langerhans cell sar-coma – one of six cases in the world.

The 13-year-old continued to smile through Friday night’s procedure, even dancing to Queen’s “Don’t Stop Me Now” in a video his mum Callie posted on YouTube. Writing on Twitter yesterday, she said: “He’s defying all the medical books and not reacting badly to anything.”

His bone marrow donor, a young man from Germany, has a different blood type to the one Deryn was born with, and his body will switch from an A+ to an O+ once his new marrow starts producing blood.

Doctors had given him extra fluids over the weekend because of the change, but because he did not have any reactions they took him off the additional liquids and he was able to walk around and take a shower.

Writing on her blog, Callie said: “He had more conditioning than most people; he had total body irradiation and direct radiotherapy. He had as much chemotherapy as his body could take, and look at him.

“This has dumbfounded the staff here; they expected far worse. He has done what he always does and I truly hope that he keeps doing it – he has stuck two fingers up to cancer and all it has to throw at him.” She said they should know within three weeks if the transplant has worked, but until then he has no immune system.

Callie is washing and tumble drying his clothes every day, putting them in zip lock bags once dry and then wiping the outside of the bag with disinfectant before taking them to his isolation room in the Bristol Royal Hospital for Children.

She wrote: “This time is critical. They worry a lot about him getting an infection which could kill him. We know this and we know that there is a strong possibility of this happening. The biggest risk is him getting an infection from within himself.”

But last night she wrote: “He’s feeling amazing. Not sure how he does it but he’s not normal.”

Send Deryn a message of support on Twitter using @_DoEveRYthiNg.

martin.george@archant.co.uk