LAST year, Dan Yeates spent ten minutes in goal for his South London five-a-side football team.
For a man who a few years ago played top tier American football and considered becoming a professional cyclist, it wasn’t a great sporting achievement. But Dan was elated.
Personal goal … anyone aged between 16 and 30 can donate stem cells through Anthony Nolan
“I’d gone to watch the boys but someone pulled a hamstring and I was drafted in,” Dan says. “It was amazing.”
Those ten minutes were a miracle – because in January 2020, Dan was diagnosed with blood cancer.
Just 27 then and super-fit, Dan put feeling tired down to his 70-hour-a-week job in software sales and long-haul flights to visit his girlfriend Ruchel in Sydney.
But a cough prompted him to visit a GP for the first time in seven years. He was prescribed antibiotics for a chest infection and given blood tests.
A month later – when he should have been in San Francisco at a conference – Dan was at St George’s Hospital in London having a bone marrow biopsy. It showed that he had acute lymphoblastic leukaemia, a rare form of blood cancer.
“I had a 50-50 chance of making it to Christmas,” he says. “I cried for 20 minutes – then went into problem-solving mode.
“There was a 50 per cent chance of surviving this – awesome. I’d do everything the doctors told me and bring a positive attitude every day.”
While Dan started six months of chemo and radiotherapy, Ruchel moved to London and his five-a-side mates visited him in hospital. Then Covid hit – and Dan was confined to an isolation room.
“If I got Covid, game over,” he says. “I focused on staying alive and playing Fifa and Call of Duty.”
Doctors told Dan his best chance of survival was a stem cell transplant to replace his poorly cells with healthy ones.
Be a game changer
This year, Anthony Nolan celebrates its 50th anniversary with the goal of reaching one million donors on its stem cell register.
Younger donors offer better survival rates for patients. So if you’re aged between 16 and 30, join up at anthonynolan.org.
You’ll get a swab (like a giant cotton bud) in the post – move it around your mouth and send it back.
That’s exactly what Noah, 18, from Manchester did last year, after his sister spotted a post about Anthony Nolan on Instagram.
“My mother needed lots of blood due to complications when I was born and I wanted to give back,” he says. “When I came up as a match for a patient in need of a stem cell transplant a few months later, I was excited.
“On donation day I sat down on a bed with a needle in my arm, was hooked up to a machine and watched a couple of movies. That was it! I feel a real sense of pride I’ve helped save a life.”
Are you under 30? Join the stem cell register: one million people united against blood cancer
So they contacted a charity called Anthony Nolan which runs a stem cell register and has made nearly 26,500 transplants happen worldwide since 1974.
“I was lucky,” Dan says. “A 25-year-old German woman was a perfect match.”
The transplant took place on June 25, 2020 – Dan’s 28th birthday.
“The best gift ever – a chance of life. It took an hour and a half as donor stem cells, which look like orange blood, were pumped inside me,” he remembers.
The transplant was a success. Dan’s donated stem cells did their job, producing red and white blood cells. Four years on, Dan is married to Ruchel and working full time.
But, a year after his transplant, he developed chronic graft-versus-host disease. This means some of the donated cells think the cells in Dan’s eyes, mouth, gut, skin and lungs are foreign – so they’re attacking them.
With impaired lung function and chronic fatigue, Dan’s sporting days were over.
“The loss of the old me was like grief – an Anthony Nolan-funded psychologist helped me through,” Dan says.
“It could be a lot worse – I could be dead! Now I appreciate simple pleasures. A takeaway and film with Ruchel and walking our cavapoo, Sirius – amazing.
“In the pub with the boys watching Man United beat Man City in the cup final – really amazing!”
Dan volunteers for Anthony Nolan as an online community champion, and on stands informing the public about the charity’s work.
“I wouldn’t be here if a woman in Germany hadn’t said yes when someone asked her to sign up to the stem cell register,” he tells potential donors. “By signing up, you could save a life too.”
Over 30? Younger donors give transplant patients a better chance of survival. But if you’re 30+ you can still help. It costs Anthony Nolan £40 to recruit each lifesaver to the register. So donate now!