Bride-to-be Kate Robertson is fighting to save her fiancé Mike Brandon‘s life by raising awareness of his search for a stem cell donor to fight his leukaemia.
He has just 60 days to find a donor - his specialists are aiming to carry out Mike’s transplant at the start of July.
Kate and Mike are calling on those aged 16–30 to join our register and help us find more matches, and save more lives.
Kate, a physiotherapist, received the devastating news of Mike’s leukaemia in a remote internet café in Burma whilst on a six month backpacking trip of a lifetime in 2014. Recent Oxford Brookes graduate Mike called her mobile, Kate was expecting it to be good news as he’d been waiting to hear back from a job interview, instead, 5,000 miles away from home, her world fell to pieces.
Her boyfriend of four years, Mike, had proposed 3 weeks before she set off, joking he wanted to 'lock that s**t down' before she left! He proposed to her on a moonlit walk in Porlock, Exmoor as they spent their last weekend away together before her big trip.
Mike's story
Mike had been feeling fatigued for weeks and getting nightsweats, but as he wasn't registered with a doctor at the time, it took a while to get an appointment.
When he finally got to see a doctor, he was given blood tests. And just four hours later, he was given the shattering news that he had Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia (ALL).
"I had been due to go on a three week trek in Nepal the following day, so if the news had come a day later, Mike wouldn't have been able to reach me for weeks. Thankfully I got the message in time and after a gruelling ten hour bus journey, twelve hour wait in Yangon, two eleven hour flights and a three hour car journey I was finally by his side." said Kate.
Mike's parents live in Somerset, so when Kate got back and Mike was well enough to continue his chemotherapy as an outpatient, the pair moved in with some of Kate's school friends in Bristol, Gaz and Sal.
"They've been absolutely amazing to us - literally like an extended family. There are so many rules we have to follow for Mike's health, about cleanliness, care and food and so on, and Gaz and Sal don't even question it - nothing is too much trouble for them."
The search for a match
Mike was given a first round of chemotherapy at Bristol Royal Infirmary, with a more intensive course due in May 2014. As he has been diagnosed with the sub-type [Philadephia +], his prognosis is slightly worse than initially thought and he has been told he will need a stem cell transplant imminently.
Devastatingly, none of his three brothers are a match. A third of people needing a transplant are able to find a sibling match, but the other two thirds turn to us to find them a lifesaving donor from the register.
'So much ahead of him'
A month after Kate and Mike started dating Mike accepted a job with the RSPCA in North Wales, while Kate was working as a physiotherapist in Bristol.
"We'd just started dating when he had to move four hours away, so we wrote to each other constantly - beautiful emails and stories - and developed a really strong connection across the miles."
Mike later spent a year doing his Masters in Oxford Brookes and the pair eventually moved back to Bristol together in September 2013, where they planned to make their life together, once Kate returned from travelling and Mike got a job.
"A week after his diagnosis, Mike did finally hear back about his interview," said Kate. "He'd been offered the job."
Mike explained that he'd been diagnosed with leukaemia, and that he was likely to be unwell for at least 6-12 months. The employers offered to hold the job for him.
Mike now has so much ahead of him - a new job, a wedding and building a family- but he desperately needs to find a matching stem cell donor so that he can focus on getting better and embrace his future.
'It's so easy and straightforward to sign up'
"Our friends and family in London and Bristol have rallied around, asking what they can do to help, and already at least twenty of them joined the Anthony Nolan donor register straight away. Any one of them could be a match for someone like Mike who needs a donor. It's so easy and straightforward to sign up.
We started thinking that if we channel our energies into getting our friends, and friends of friends, and even strangers, to join the register, we could make a big difference."
How you can help
Please help Kate and Mike by getting involved in the #Shake4mike campaign.
Mike’s family and friends have hijacked Mike’s love of a shaky face photo to raise awareness and increase donor numbers on the Anthony Nolan register in the hope of finding a match for Mike.
In four simple steps you could save a life.
1. Join the Anthony Nolan register here
2. Shake your face and take a photo (just relax all the muscles in your face and shake it from side to side!)
3. Share your photo on Facebook and Twitter with the hashtag #shake4mike. Click here for a pre-written tweet, and don't forget to attach your photo.
4. Nominate a friend to do the same and keep this campaign going.