Mum given two months to live is saved by her son

A FAMILY will get to celebrate Christmas together after a son donated stem cells to save his mother from an aggressive form of blood cancer.

- BY MATTHEW BARBOUR

Amanda with her supporter is to have treatment and, hopefully, a transplant in 2024

Amanda Brown was given just two months to live late last year when her planned stem cell donor in Germany pulled out just before the scheduled transplant.

After undergoing years of chemotherapy for acute myeloid leukaemia, from which 80% of sufferers die within five years, she was too frail for further treatment.

So her medical team tried a long-shot — testing her children Joseph and Samantha as potential donors.

Only around 25% of children are partial matches — and complete matches in the same family are incredibly rare.

Amanda, 59, from the Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire, says when the results came back the room fell silent. Both of her children were perfect matches her consultant told them she had never seen this before.

"We all cried," Amanda, a community rehab worker for the NHS, says. "It felt like some kind of divine intervention."

Joseph, 34, and Samantha, 36, who both live in Gloucester with their partners and children, did not hesitate in volunteering to