When Phoebe Dowling started school this month, her presence in the class wasn’t just down to her mum or dad making sure she there on time with shiny shoes and a new school uniform.
For the four-year-old also has dozens of complete strangers to thank for making it to class for the first time.
People she’s never met and never will.
People who sat for hours, patiently, through mild discomfort, saving her life, quietly keeping her alive through their own sacrifice, not knowing exactly who they were helping.
For when little Phoebe was 14 months old, her parents heard the worse news any parent of a toddler could hear – she had acute lymphoblastic leukaemia, or ALL, a cancer of her blood that was poisoning her entire body.
Doctors used chemotherapy to attack the cancer, but that destroyed Phoebe’s blood too – in particular, the very important platelets in all our blood that stop bleeding, help clotting and keep the blood healthy.
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