Darren update 2

Darren went to see the bone marrow specialists in Bristol today, where his treatment will take place. One great answer-to-prayer in the search for a bone marrow donor (see post from 21.05), is that they have found over 20 potential matches! However, once the perfect match has been selected, the road to recovery is going to be an incredibly tough journey for him.

He will require another round of chemo, followed by 8 weeks of near isolation, where his existing bone marrow is killed off and the donor marrow introduced to kick-start his defences again. This will hopefully wipe out the leukaemia once and for all. He will be debilitated for much of this time and i imagine it will be months before he's back to full strength.

Success is by no means guaranteed and if it doesn't work, his overall chances of surviving his leukaemia are drastically reduced. This was a big wake-up call for him.

Emotionally, he is very fragile at the moment. Added to this, his partner is now leaving, has rented out their house from July and is moving up North again. The snapshot of his current circumstances is pretty grim: He is very seriously ill, without any immediate family support, out of work (for obvious reasons) and effectively homeless from next month.

Please pray for Darren. He is one great guy - a real character - and he has really grown into our hearts over these past few weeks. I've been encouraging him to take things one day, even one hour at a time. How else can you approach such a mountain? He has a faith in God and its really being put to the test at the moment.

He needs so much to come together, before he can start to enjoy the healthy, comfortable, supportive, secure, day-to-day lives that most of us take for granted.

While Claudia and i are committed to doing what we can for Darren, we have quite a lot to go through ourselves in the coming months (and he is 100% totally aware of this)!! We want to harness the power of prayer for Darren.

I believe with your prayers for him, we'll see exciting breakthroughs happen for him. They have already started (finding bone marrow donors). Let's keep going, there's a way to go yet.
Jesus said of himself "I have come to give you life, life in all its fullness" (John 10 v 10).
We want this life for Darren.
I will keep the updates coming on his progress - thanks for reading this!