‘I want to live for my children’: mother with blood cancer pleads for donor
A MOTHER-OF-TWO has issued an urgent appeal for a Latin American bone marrow donor to help cure her of a rare form of blood cancer.
Ruby Cruz, 37, of Walthamstow, needs to find a tissue match but there is a lack of donors from ethnic minorities on the register.
She said: “I want to live for my little children and for my family who so desperately need me.
“There is a very real chance that I will die if a bone marrow match is not found but I refuse to just give up.”
Mrs Cruz was born in El Salvador but her family fled during the civil war to Australia when she was a child.
After gaining a degree and forging a successful c areer in social work Mrs Cruz moved to London in 2007 where she met her husband Sam Seddon, 44. Their children are Daniel, two, and Sofia, 11 months.
Last June, Mrs Cruz started having symptoms including pain in her bones and hips, severe tiredness and a lump around her thyroid gland. She was admitted to A&E multiple times and given morphine but by October was in “excruciating pain”. The next month she was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia/lymphoma.
She has been having chemotherapy since mid-November as an inpatient at University College London and has only been allowed out for a week over Christmas.
Mr Seddon said: “Finding a donor is the best chance we have. This type of cancer does keep on coming back and does require a bone marrow transplant for a cure.”
He added: “It’s hard, it’s traumatic for us all. If it doesn’t make a difference for her it will make a difference for another family. Get on the website and register now. Time is of the essence for Ruby. It sounds full-on but actually it’s a swab for a test then it’s giving blood. The transplant sounds like taking marrow out of a leg bone but it’s not like that.”
Their friends have set up a campaign, Register for Ruby, to encourage Latin Americans to sign up for DKMS, the world’s largest bone marrow centre.
Mrs Cruz has also contacted the El Salvadorean embassy to see if it can arrange an event to raise the profile of the register. To register visit: www. dkms.org/en