Battling Heather to undergo second bone marrow transplant - this time from her mum

Heather Parkinson always has a cheerful smile on her face and a positive demeanour capable of finding the silver lining in the grimmest of news.

Even though Heather has spent the last 14 years fighting cancer and dealing with the blows of being told the disease has returned, her attitude is to simply laugh and say: “I’m still here aren’t I!” and she remains ever optimistic that there’s always hope of a cure.

Despite being told her cancer had returned once again despite a successful bone marrow transplant from her sister Shelley a few years ago, Heather has taken the news in her stride and is now preparing to undergo her second stem cell transplant - this time from her mum Sheila Parkinson.

Heather, 32, who lives in Leyland, near Preston, says: “It will be 14 years this May since I was diagnosed with cancer and started the first of many treatments.

“But in a strange kind of way, it is normality for me so I just get on with things as you have to keep positive.

“Doctors have told me there are no more drugs I can have to fight my cancer as I have had them all.

“So the only option was to look at another transplant.

“But me being me, I have to be awkward by having an unusual tissue type so they have been struggling to find a match for me.

“As well as looking at the list of possible donors in the UK, the opened up the search worldwide, but they still couldn’t find a match.

“The nearest they could get was an eight out of 10 match - but it wasn’t even a good eight out of 10.

“So they have decided to do a haploidentical stem cell transplant as your parents make up half of you.

“They tested my mum and tests showed she was a six out of 10 match. However, she is a perfect six out of 10 which is still better than a rubbish eight.”

Heather’s long battle first began at the age of 19 when she began suffering from a cough that wouldn’t go away.

Tests revealed Heather had Hodgkin’s Lymphoma in which cancer originates from a specific type of white blood cells called lymphocytes.

Heather, who owns a pet shop in Kirkham, near Preston, managed to beat the disease with chemotherapy and radiotherapy - only for it to return two years later.

Heather’s plights first hit the headlines in the Lancashire Evening Post when health chiefs refused to fund a trial cancer treatment which experts believed was Heather’s best chance.

Even though the treatment would have only cost the NHS £3,000, as a private patient, she faced forking out £16,00 - which she just didn’t have.

After the Evening Post highlighted Heather’s tale, generous readers rallied round and donated the £16,000 needed and she got the treatment she needed.

The trial treatment was successful in shrinking Heather’s tumours drastically enough for her to undergo a stem cell transplant for which her older sister Shelley was the donor.

The transplant was a success. But just seven months later, Heather was dealt a massive blow when a routine scan showed new tumours in her chest.

Ever the fighter, Heather began a new targeted chemotherapy with a newly licensed drug and it managed to keep the cancer at bay even though it was still in her body. When the cancer remained unchanged for 12 months, Heather was thrilled to be told by doctors that she was in remission.

However, her happiness was short-lived as last year, regular checks revealed there were signs the cancer had returned once again.

Once again, Heather faced more gruelling treatment and she was given more infusions of her sister Shelley’s lymphocytes.

But things reached a stage where Heather had taken the maximum dose of lymphocytes from Shelley and the only option left was to look at another transplant.

As if that wasn’t enough for Heather to contend with, a routine test showed a blood clot on her heart and she was put on blood thinning injections to dissolve it.

Heather says: “Shelley was still donating lymphocytes to me, but it had got to the stage where it was taking two days to donate them and it was taking a toll on her body.