I have a stranger's DNA

Kirsty Sadler’s life was in the hands of a young man who she had never even met

- FRANCES LEATE

Staring at the blank page, with my pen poised, I was struggling to find the words. How can you thank a complete stranger for saving your life? I didn’t know anything about him, except he was in his early 20s, lived thousands of miles away, and five months earlier had been the difference between me seeing my daughter grow up and the unthinkable alternative.

It was August 2016 when my husband, Wayne, then 55, found me passed out on the bathroom floor on the morning of my 47th birthday, and rushed me to University Hospital in Coventry.

Working as an operations manager for a multinational company, and having a 10-year-old daughter, Jorja, I’d put the tiredness, headaches, night sweats and urine infections I’d been suffering for the past 12 months down to being a busy working mum. I’d even shrugged off the strange bruising that appeared around my ankles and kneecaps after a run.

But a blood test in A&E after my collapse revealed my white-blood-cell count was high. As I went home to await further test results, I flipped between fear and nonchalance – and, by the time of my appointment with the haematologist, I’d convinced myself the results were a blip due to another UTI.

Only, the specialist confirmed I had chronic lymphocytic leukaemia (CLL) – a high-risk form of blood cancer that doesn’t respond to chemotherapy. Turning to Wayne, I saw that he’d turned a ghostly white, but I switched to practical mode, asking how long I had to live and what my options were.

The answer was that people with my type of cancer have an average lifespan of five years, and the only treatment would be a stem-cell transplant to replace my cancerous blood cells with healthy ones. As the consultant divulged this stream of overwhelming and terrifying information, Wayne and I sat holding hands in silence.

Telling Jorja