Mum wins 10-year battle with cancer (From Swindon Advertiser)

Mum wins 10-year battle with cancer

9:30am Thursday 24th December 2009

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AFTER a 10-year battle with cancer, Danika Brown has been given the all clear by doctors.

Now she and husband Gavin will celebrate 10-month-old son Rori’s first Christmas Day, an occasion she thought might never happen.

“We got the best Christmas present,” said Danika, 21, of Angus Close, Ramleaze.

“It’s the best feeling in the world, but quite scary at the same time.”

Diagnosed at 11 with Hodgkin's lymphoma, Danika, who has fought cancer four times, said she would go through it all again to get to where she is now.

She said: “I haven’t had a choice, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Last week Danika was told her blood cells had been completely replaced by her 17-year-old sister Jade’s, who donated her bone marrow.

This means Danika now has her sister’s DNA and there is a lot less chance of the cancer returning.

Danika said: “It was all we could have asked for because my body has a weakness to the Hodgkins.

“Obviously Jade’s blood is okay to fight it.”

The former Ridgeway student, who works for Thames Water, appeared in the Advertiser in April 2007 when she brought her wedding to Gavin Brown, 22, forward after being diagnosed with five tumours in her abdomen.

Danika had a successful bone marrow transplant from Jade, then 14, in July 2007 and was in remission.

Because of the treatment she was receiving, Danika was given a less than one per cent chance of conceiving – but she ignored the risks to her own health and planned for a family.

She soon fell pregnant with Rori.

She gave birth in February, but was told she would need bone marrow top up infusions from her sister to prevent the cancer from returning.

She underwent the first such treatment in July.

Danika was expecting to need another few infusions to complete the process, but she was given the news by doctors last week.

When Danika got the call asking her to go to the Great Western Hospital, she automatically assumed it must be bad news.

“It still hasn’t sunk in,” she said.

“We were in shock – I didn’t know what to do. I questioned him to make sure I’d understood, I just couldn’t believe it.”

Gavin, who works at Asda in West Swindon, said: “It couldn’t be better news, it’s made our Christmas.”

Danika said she does not find it strange to have her sister’s DNA as they have always been close.

“There is no way I could thank Jade for what she’s done for me,” she said.

“She completely saved my life, without Jade I wouldn’t be here now full stop.

“I would never have had Rori or seen his first Christmas, his first birthday – that’s all down to Jade.

“To think, I’m going to watch him open his presents on Christmas morning.

“Knowing that Jade’s given that to me I can’t even explain it, I can’t put it into words.”

Danika said it is hard to accept she was given the chance of life when she has met people who were not so lucky.

She said: “It makes me realise how lucky I have been.”

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