Help young Austin Rushworth fight rare cancer

We are taking things bit by bit at the moment. The first weeks were mainly hotels and transport. I managed to get some of the transport costs down through the patient transport service, which took place twice a week while they tackled the Lymphoblastic Leukaemia. Right now, we are in the second phase of chemotherapy, which is tackling Myeloid Leukaemia. We are two weeks into this period which runs for seven weeks in total and has Austin staying permanently in Hospital for that period. The plan is to do one week each at a time between myself and Rita. This week is the school holidays, so I have brought my daughter Sophie and our dog, Jock, up with me to stay in a nearby hotel. Tonight we switched places. Rita is staying in the hotel, and I am with my son at the hospital tonight. So after this week, it will just be transport costs as we go back to one week each at a time with Austin, with a weekend swap over. We have to travel 111 miles (178 km) each way to see him. Rita had to leave her job through all of this in order to spend time with him every other week. There is a more intensive period ahead, with stronger Chemotherapy leading up to the stem cell transplant and the delicate recovery period afterward. This should take another 6 weeks, with a further two weeks of recovery. At the moment, Austin is on the national register to find a donor for stem cells, which will look across the UK and then Northern Europe for a match.

Sophie, Rita and I failed to be a stem cell match for Austin. There was always a 1 in 4 chance that Sophie would have been the best match. It turns out her stem cells are at the opposite end of the spectrum to Austin's after all that waiting. The Royal Victoria Hospital is setting in place a target to find a 90% match of North European descent by February.