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Cyril Needs a Bone Marrow Donor - Please
Help
 Cyril
Onyejekwe is a member of the Communication Workers
Union (CWU) Race Advisory Committee. Cyril has
been diagnosed with the early stages of Leaukemia
and is now looking for a Bone Marrow donor.
Cyril is facing up
to a personal battle with a rare bone marrow disease in the
same way he approaches his union duties — with courage and
positivity.
After almost 30 years of
service in the CWU and its former incarnations Cyril is
facing his toughest challenge yet after being diagnosed with
myelofibrosis — which attacks the bone marrow and prevents
new blood cells forming.
CWU Race Advisory Committee
member Cyril is desperately seeking a potential donor after
recent tests on his sister
Franca failed to find a match.
The CWU’s
Race Advisory Committee is in the early stages of organising
registration clinics at big centres such as the
Mount Pleasant Mail Centre in east
London or Croydon Mail Centre in the
south of the capital, where there are high numbers of ethnic
minority employees.
50-year-old Cyril is
the head of a large family, with four children of
his own plus two stepchildren from his wife Janet’s
previous marriage. His twin girls Emma and Katie are
just 13 years old. He also has four granddaughters.
After being diagnosed in
January 2006, Cyril says he has not had too much time to
think about the implications of failing to find a donor, but
does worry about the burden of responsibility which will
fall on his wife if a suitable match cannot be found.
He admits to being “knocked
for six” when he was diagnosed but insists “it’s important
to be positive, to do the right things and to listen to my
body. That’s how I got an early diagnosis — I became aware
of an abdominal pain and decided to get it checked out
rather than just hope it would go away.
“After tests the
doctor told me: ‘The good news is you don’t have
gallstones. The bad news is that you have an
enlarged spleen’ — a classic symptom of
myelofibrosis, as the spleen goes into overdrive
trying to make up for deficiencies in the bone
marrow.”
Fatigue is also a symptom and
Cyril admits that at first he thought he was just working
too hard after falling asleep in front of the TV. Cyril says
his diagnosis is especially hard to take because he is still
relatively young and is neither a smoker nor a drinker.
“More ethnic minority people
need to register,” Cyril points out.
And that is the key.
More black and
ethnic minority potential donors
are urgently needed.
Can you help? If you are between 18 and
40 years old and in good health? Then please join the Bone Marrow
Register. You could be someone's lifesaver. So please do
something special - before it's too late.
click here to return to home page
click here to find out how you
can register
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