A Wirral toddler's donor match arrived the night before treatment — and a Derby 12-year-old who once had no words is about to give a speech
An anonymous donor was matched to a Wirral toddler the night before his treatment was due to start, after an Everton appeal put 1,000 people on the stem cell register — and in Derby, a 12-year-old with developmental language disorder is about to give a public speech about it.
Ronnie was 11 months old when his mother, Laura, noticed he was bruising more than usual. Three days later she saw blood coming from his nose, blisters in his mouth and red dots on his body. A week before his first birthday, doctors told the family he had aplastic anaemia, a condition in which the bone marrow stops making enough new blood cells. 1
The family live on the Wirral, in Merseyside. Ronnie's only route back was a stem cell transplant, and in May they were told the odds were poor: his genetics made a 10-out-of-10 donor match unlikely to be found. 1
The match that came last
A nine-out-of-10 match, the next best thing, also failed to appear. The plan became immunotherapy, which Laura describes as something that "would just have kept Ronnie going until a match was hopefully found". 1
Then a consultant told her a 10-out-of-10 match had been found, the night before that treatment was due to start. Ronnie was booked in for the transplant on 4 August at Royal Manchester Children's Hospital. 1
The donor is anonymous. "I can't describe the feeling of what the donor did for our little boy," Laura said. 1
1,000 people at a football match
Ronnie is now at 100% donor cells, and making his own white cells, red cells and platelets. He walks and runs around the house. He still has neutropenia, which leaves him short of the white cells that fight bacterial infections, so the family are isolating; the zoo and the swimming pool are pencilled in for February or March. 1
The family are Everton fans. At the Merseyside derby in April 2025 the club put Ronnie's picture on a display with a QR code and one line: "Ronnie urgently needs a lifesaving stem cell transplant". About 1,000 people joined the Anthony Nolan register as a direct result, the club said. 1
"I remember crying and people saying 'is that your son'," Laura said, after he appeared on the ground's display. "It is a memory that will always live with me." 1
Anthony Nolan has been matching donors to patients for more than 50 years, and says its work gives four people another chance of life every day. Joining the register starts with a cheek swab. 2
The speech
Ridley is 12 and lives in Derby. She has developmental language disorder, which causes long-term difficulty with talking and understanding words, and she was diagnosed when she was five. 3
On Friday she will stand up at Derby Conference Centre, give a speech about the condition, and light the building purple for DLD awareness day. Speech and Language UK says it affects about two children in every classroom in primary school. 3
"I'm going to be talking a lot about DLD, because I'm a chatterbox about special educational needs and disabilities," she said. "I'm really scared, so if I do some fumbles, please don't laugh." 3
Her mother, Chrissa, noticed something early. Ridley's twin was "far more advanced" with talking, and people asked whether Ridley might be autistic. "We said, no, there's something that doesn't scream autism to us," Chrissa said. 3
Speech and language therapy followed the diagnosis, along with a lot of work in English lessons. Ridley is now at a mainstream school. Friday's event is run by Sunshine Support, the special educational needs and disabilities charity her mother founded. 3
"When I look back to that four or five-year-old child who was struggling to find her words, you'd see her trying to interact with anybody, she couldn't actually form any words," Chrissa said. "Then to think at age 12, she's now going to stand on the steps of Derby Conference Centre and open up our evening. I mean, I didn't expect it." 3
What stays with me is how long both of these took, and how plain the reward looks: a boy running round his living room, and a girl standing up to speak.
References
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- 2Anthony Nolan, the stem cell register
anthonynolan.org
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