An boy who is the only person in the world fighting both leaukaemia and a form of cancer so rare that there are just four other sufferers worldwide appears to be making a miraculous recovery.
Deryn Blackwell, 14, was struck down by leukaemia in 2010. Two years later he received the devastating news that he had the extremely rare Langerhans Cell Sarcoma.
But despite the grim diagnosis, he has made an incredible battle back from the brink.
The heroic youngster and his devastated family were warned just five weeks ago that he would die before Christmas and he was moved into a hospice as they prepared for the worst.
Deryn’s shattered mother and father, Callie and Simon, and little brother Dylan, nine, held their very emotional Christmas early so they could all celebrate one last time.
They even planned the teenager’s funeral and made his will.
But the youngster has stunned his parents, doctors and specialists by continuing to battle the killer cancers – and going from strength to strength.
At his worst, Deryn, who has had two failed bone marrow transplants, was on 35 drugs a day. Now he takes only one.
Medical experts are at a loss to explain the recovery. The teenager’s body is now making its own red blood cells and is growing back bone marrow.
In a landmark blog post she never thought she’d write, Mrs Blackwell, 33, of Watton, Norfolk, quoted her son’s astonished doctors: ‘Deryn, we sent you to the hospice because we firmly believed that with the catastrophic infections that you had and the fact that you had absolutely no immune system, you would not have been able to live much longer than a few days once away from the hospital, death was imminent.
‘Understandably remaining very cautious but much more positive,’ Callie said last night. ‘It’s still up and down.
‘It’s on the up and I am so scared to get too excited in case it goes downhill. But he’s getting better and better each day.
‘The doctors told us that was it, he is going to die, but now the doctors haven’t got a clue because he is making his own blood cells again.’
The mother added: ‘I thought about asking the doctors “were you wrong?” or “was there a machine failure”?
‘But I think I do believe in miracles – I can’t think of any other explanation.
‘Even the doctors have been left scratching their heads.’
Callie said Deryn had not been physically sick in three weeks – whereas he used to be almost every day – and he was far more mobile than before..
Deryn went to be treated at the renowned Bristol Children’s Hospital last February as he desperately battled both cancers.
After living in a house next to the hospital provided by a children’s charity, the Blackwells decided to move in to a hospice before Christmas to care for Deryn in the final weeks of his short life.
But proud Callie said they now had to move out of the hospice as her brave son no longer needed that intensely high level of care.
She said of Deryn last year: My son is fighting TWO cancers – leukaemia and Langerhans Cell Sarcoma.
He is truly just one in seven billion all over the world.
Source Mail Online
