Furness schoolgirl pleads for bone marrow donor to save her life (From The Westmorland Gazette)

Furness schoolgirl pleads for bone marrow donor to save her life

5:53pm Wednesday 28th April 2010 in News By Helen Perkins, Reporter

A DESPERATELY ill schoolgirl is pleading with the people of Cumbria to help save her life.

Fourteen-year-old Alice Pyne is suffering from Hodg-kins lymphoma – cancer of the white blood cells – and urgently needs a bone mar-row transplant.

But family and friends do not have the matching tissue needed to cure her.

Her determined parents have launched an appeal for people to join a transplant register in the hope that a suitable match can be found.

And Alice, a pupil at Barrow’s Chetwynde School, said: “It would mean a lot to me if, by reading my story, people come forward and join the register.

"I’ve lost a few friends along the way and some of them would still be here if they’d found a match in time. Please do this for me.”

Her parents, Vicky and Simon, have organised the special registration session – which they have named ‘Alice’s Clinic’ – at the school next week to try to sign up prospective donors with the help of cancer charity the Anthony Nolan Trust.

Mother-of-two Mrs Pyne said: “We could sit here and watch Disney videos and cry all day but we’re not a negative family, so we’re rising to the challenge of finding Alice a donor.”

Mrs Pyne added that the bond she shared with her daughter had strengthened since Alice had been diagnosed two years ago.

“Sometimes I drive about in my car and see kids walking down the street, and I think to myself that it isn’t fair, she should be out there with them – but she never complains.

“She spends quite a lot of time asleep and hasn’t been at school regularly for two years, but some of her friends still come round and she says she’s happy with her few real companions.”

Alice underwent a stem cell transplant, using her own treated tissue, in September last year.

The family hoped it would cure her condition but in December doctors found the cancer had returned.

“It was a hard Christmas to get through – nothing had worked,” said Mrs Pyne, of Rake Street, Ulverston.

Alice has already had several chemotherapy sessions and these will intensify this week. She is often exhausted, cannot walk any distance unaided and takes powerful drugs every day.

Doctors have said that unless she has a bone marrow transplant she will die.

The family said Alice was a keen swimmer, although the Hichman tubes connected to her chest and the food tube attatched to her nose had prevented her from getting in the pool.

While at Liverpool’s Alder Hey children’s hospital, she watched videos of whales in Alaska and it is her dream to go out and see them.

The teenager is a talented artist and won a comp-etition to design a mosaic for the hospital.

Mrs Pyne, 41, added: “A neighbour introduced her to oil painting last summer and she’s got better and better – at the moment she’s painting a sunset.

“She knows what’s ahead and is rushing to finish her work before she begins chemotherapy this week.”

Mrs Pyne and husband Simon, 47 said their daugh-ters Alice, 14, and Milly, 11 – who suffers from Crou-zon’s syndrome – had both endured long periods in hospital.

Their mother explained: “The pair are quite sup-portive of each other and I’ve gone into Alice’s room before to find Milly lying on Alice’s bed stroking her hair.

“Both their conditions came out of the blue – sometimes I think we must be in line for some luck, starting any time soon.”

The Anthony Nolan Trust has organised a clinic where healthy individuals aged 18-40 can join the bone marrow register by giving a saliva sample and filling out a simple form.

‘Alice’s Clinic’ will be between 3.30pm and 7.30pm next Friday, May 7, at Chetwynde School, Abbey Road, Barrow.

More information is available at the Alice Pyne Bone Marrow Recruitment Appeal Facebook page, which already hasmore than 1,000 fans.

You can view the site at www.

facebook.com/pages/Alice-Pyne-Bone-Marrow-Recruitment-Appeal