Boy to give sister transplant hope of beating cancer

WHEN Shannon MacKenzie looks at her little brother Ross she sees hope for her future – for he has offered her the gift of life.

He is a bashful, bright child with a cheeky grin and an infectious personality, a well-known character among hospital staff who have looked after his sister while she has battled cancer – twice in her short life.

It is unlikely he fully understands what it meant to 13-year-old Shannon and her parents, from Wallyford, East Lothian, when recent test results showed he was a match for a vital bone marrow transplant which could save his big sister's life.

Soon, the eight-year-old will travel to Glasgow with Shannon where surgeons will carry out the transplant, which he told his mum and dad he wants to be part of, "to make Shannon better".

Perhaps only in years to come will Ross, a pupil at Newcraighall Primary, realise what it is he did for his sister.

Both mum Lynsey, 36, and dad Euan, 42, did not have a stem cell match for their daughter, leaving all hopes resting on the shoulders of young Ross.

"He had only a one-in-four chance of being a match," Lynsey explains, sitting on the edge of Shannon's bed in the teenage cancer unit at the Sick Kids.

"But he was and I am so very proud of them both."

Life has not been kind to Holyrood High pupil Shannon, a pretty, confident and mature girl who has already gone through more in the last 15 months than most people will experience in a lifetime.

"I'm pretty bored and fed-up really," she smiles, staring though the window at the sun beating down on the street outside.

It is hardly a surprise, for today is not the first she has missed with her school friends during the Easter holidays.

Since Christmas 2008, Shannon has spent most of her life in the Sick Kids, undergoing gruelling chemotherapy to rid her of Acute Myeloid Leukaemia (AML) which was diagnosed on Christmas Eve after weeks of leg pain and various blood tests.

Things had been going really well until January this year when the cancer returned just after she had made it back to school, her hair had re-grown and her hopes of having beaten the disease were high.

"When we first got the diagnosis, I was numb," Lynsey sighs. "I thought, 'This just cannot be happening. This is the sort of thing that happens to other people'.

"But I have found the second time very hard indeed – we're all so emotionally drained."

Perhaps no-one more so than Shannon herself, who says she dreams of being forever free of chemotherapy, having her hair fully grown back and living a normal life with her family, which will see them take a long-anticipated holiday to Disneyland Paris.

The past year or so has not been easy for Ross either, watching his sister get ill and then better again, before getting ill once more.

His world has been turned upside down as either one of his parents takes turns to spend every night with Shannon in Sick Kids, while the other takes him back to their family home. Most of his school holidays are spent in the hospital, as are his evenings, but he has always been by his sister's side when she has been well enough to attend events for cancer patients, arranged by the Edinburgh-based support group CCLASP (Children with Cancer and Leukaemia Advice and Support for Parents).

Ross knows that when Shannon receives her transplant at Glasgow's Yorkhill hospital, she will probably have to stay there for at least two months, meaning he will move in with his grandparents in Edinburgh so his parents can be with her.

"When Shannon's illness is spoken about, Ross just clams up. He really won't talk about it," Lynsey explains. "But he said he wants to make her better and he wants to do this for her. They're very close."

So much so that when Shannon won tickets to meet the X Factor finalists at the beginning of the year, before her leukaemia returned, instead of taking a school friend to meet the stars she asked Ross to come with her.

"She said he'd been through a lot too," Lynsey smiles.

The pair met the singers and Ross asked them to sign an X Factor annual he had taken especially for the trip.

The brother and sister duo are also big Hibs fans and have been asked to Easter Road by the club to meet the players.

Over the Easter holidays, Shannon sent the footballers gifts she had made from her hospital bed to raise money for CCLASP, as well as sending them to hairdresser Charlie Miller, who created and cut her wig, and Edinburgh personality Grant Stott, whom she met at Hibs.

But, for now, she must wait until doctors say she is well enough to make the journey to Glasgow for the operation, hopefully within the next couple of months.

"The doctors can not really say anything about the future though," says Lynsey.

"But we always stay positive and strong. We're going to wait until Ross is older before we explain all this to him – but we think he may already have realised by then what he did for her."

A LIFELINE FOR FAMILIES TO CCLASP HOLD OF

EDINBURGH-based charity CCLASP (Children with Cancer and Leukaemia Advice and Support for Parents) has offered a lifeline of support to Shannon MacKenzie and her family as well as hundreds of others across the country.

Set up in 1994, CCLASP exists to help support children and families, both emotionally and practically.

Services include transport to and from hospital, all over Scotland, for those who have to receive treatment many miles from their homes. CCLASP also arranges parties and outings, as well as making special wishes come true for children who have cancer.

The group was set up by Leith couple Valerie and Bill Simpson after their six-year-old son Robert was diagnosed with leukaemia, going on to receive chemotherapy, radiotherapy and finally a bone marrow transplant – he is now 23.

Mrs Simpson said: "When a parent gets home from hospital and their mind is going round and round, who can they speak to? Who will know exactly the horror they are feeling? It's me."

CCLASP is not government or NHS funded and relies solely on donations from the public.

Phone [phone] or e-mail [email protected] for information.