Teacher's 'unbreakable bond' with brother after he saved her life with stem cell transplant

A WOMAN who feared she might die after being diagnosed with advanced blood cancer has told of the unbreakable bond she shares with her younger brother, after he saved her life with a stem cell transplant at University Hospital Southampton.

Doctors told Kate Corney that a transplant would be her best chance of survival when six months of aggressive chemotherapy had failed to cure her Hodgkins Lymphoma. But the history teacher was warned there were no guarantees.

A stem cell transplant would give Kate a 50 per cent chance of curative success while there was a 10 per cent chance of her developing a life-threatening complication. Her best hope of a good outcome would be a sibling donor - but the chances of her brother or sister being a suitable match were just 25 per cent.

But despite the odds stacked against Kate, she struck lucky. Her younger brother Sam proved a match and didn’t hesitate to donate his stem cells in a bid to save his sisters life.

The life-saving transplant took place at University Hospital Southampton, which is celebrating 20 years of delivering bone marrow and stem cell transplants this week.

In the past two decades more than 2,000 transplants have taken place at the Tremona Road hospital, which treats patients from across the south of England and has been officially recognised as the best hospital in Europe for bone marrow and stem cell transplant outcomes.

Kate, 35, who is now in remission, said: “I feel unbelievably lucky to have found a donor and there was something extra special in that person being my younger brother.

“It’s impossible to put into words how grateful I am to Sam and to the incredible transplant team at University Hospital Southampton for giving me my life back.

“I’ve never heard Sam say ‘my sister is still alive because of me’ but it’s very much true.

“Now we have this amazing lifelong connection – we share the same blood group and immune system and we compare notes when either of us is ill.”

Kate was 27 years old and in her early years of teaching in July 2014, when she was diagnosed with blood cancer, after admittedly leaving it very late to seek help.

She said: “I’d known for a little while that something wasn’t right. I was experiencing extreme tiredness and weight loss. I initially didn’t realise how ill I was, as all teachers are exhausted by the end of term.

“I also had extreme itchiness and night sweats, which I later discovered was a symptom of blood cancer. I had felt lumps too – and eventually convinced myself that not only did I have cancer, but it must have spread.

“I knew very little about cancer but, with the terror that was building, I thought it was best not to tell anybody and just deal with it on my own. The concept of being properly ill was not something that I or anyone my age was used to seeing or dealing with and I left it super late.”

Kate, who lives in Emsworth with fiancé Mark, was diagnosed in A&E at Portsmouth’s Queen Alexandra Hospital and spent three weeks there before beginning six months of chemotherapy.

Kate said: “By Christmas that year it was clear that the treatment wasn’t working and that’s when my consultant first talked about a stem cell transplant which could happen down the road in Southampton.

“The first conversation was around the need for a donor and how it would be best if it could be one of my siblings because that would mean a better outcome. My younger sister Rosie was tested and devastated to find she wasn’t a match, so it was down to my brother Sam, who was 25 at the time and away travelling.

“Within days of returning home, he was giving a blood sample and was confirmed a match.”

Kate added: “My next stroke of luck was being transferred to Southampton for my transplant. From the very first moment I met the team there was just something about the way they spoke, the way they presented the information to me – I knew I was in very capable hands and trusted them immediately.”

Over the next six months Kate underwent further treatment, to ensure her body was ready for transplant while Sam, now a 33-year-old web designer who lives in London, was cared for by a separate doctor.

Kate said: “It was a weird time - I had been so unwell when first diagnosed with cancer, but then had treatments which had made me much healthier again.

“A few days before going into hospital I danced the night away at a Fleetwood Mac concert with Mark and some friends, saying farewell to life as I knew it for a while. I had to accept that they were going to make me very ill again in order to try and make me better and I was always aware that there was a real chance I might die.”

Ten days after admission to University Hospital Southampton, Kate’s transplant took place, in June 2015.

She added: “It was this incredible moment, very calm and slow. Down the corridor from me, Sam donated his stem cells. It took about five hours of him being attached to a machine before they took his stem cells to be counted and brought them up to me in a bag, hung it on the drip stand and plugged it in.

“It was a very tough time, but the team looking after me were amazing and got me through it. Gradually things started to pick up and take hold and all of a sudden there was talk about me going home.”

Speaking about his decision to be a donor for Kate, Sam said: “I was really happy to be Kate’s donor, it was nice to feel I could help her. It wasn’t painful donating, but it did take quite a long time; almost five hours.

“For the time I was hooked up, I had a needle in each arm. My blood flowed out of one arm, through a machine which slowly collected my stem cells, and then back into my other arm.

“When my donation was complete, I had given 20.5 million stem cells. Kate only needed 5 million for her transplant, so it was great to know that by donating so many, I was giving her an excellent chance of a cure.”

Following her transplant Kate required further treatment – a combination of radiotherapy and donor lymphocyte infusions. Two years later she moved onto immunotherapy which ended when the pandemic hit.

She said: “It was more dangerous for me to continue with treatment when Covid arrived, than not. After six years of treatment to cure my cancer, I’ve now been treatment free and in remission for two and half years.

“I feel unbelievably grateful and humbled by the miracle that is 21^st century medicine and I’m even more appreciative now, with the NHS under so much pressure and strain. We have an amazing health service that is 100 per cent there for you when you really need it – there is nothing better in the world.

“The transplant has entirely changed me. While most of the physical effects of my cancer are gone, I will always live with the mental impact of what I have been through. It’s made me live in the present much more and never take for granted what is happening here and now. My life has been far from tragic or awful - I have been exceptionally lucky, my friends and family have rallied when I needed them most and I have received the very best care from the transplant team in Southampton. I will forever be grateful.”