The mother of a five-month-old baby suffering from a life threatening blood disorder has spoken about her family’s desperate search for a cure.
Ivy Mai Geary was born with severe congenital neutropenia – a rare condition meaning she cannot effectively fight off infections.
Despite being put on eight different antibiotics and having around 40 IV needle procedures she remains extremely unwell and doctors say her best chance of survival is to have a bone marrow transplant.
Mother Dominque Kent, 31, said: “It has been awful and heartbreaking. It is the worst thing I have ever had to go through in my life.
“Just seeing my daughter go through all the pain that she has been having has been terrible.
“It has been really upsetting for the past 15 weeks and it is going to keep on happening because she hasn’t got an immune system. If she gets a cold it’s not something that she can just get over, it is life threatening.”
Often parents are suitable donors but sadly tests have shown that both Miss Kent and her partner Anthony Geary, Ivy Mai’s father, were not matches.
This has led to doctors at Great Ormond Street Hospital to launch a national wide appeal for donors.
They are also searching the British Bone Marrow Registry for possible matches.
Before having the transplant doctors want to put Ivy Mai through chemotherapy to build up her resistance to infections but Miss Kent says this presents them with a dilemma because the drugs side-effects could make her more ill.
She said: “I want her to have the transplant but I do not want her to have the chemotherapy because she might not get through it.”
While doctors fight to keep her alive the tiny tot has been forced to spend much of the past 15 weeks constantly in and out of the London children’s hospital.
This has meant that Mr Geary, 34, has had to take extended leave from his job as a window fitter, putting the family under considerable financial strain.
To add to this full-time mum Miss Kent, of Canvey Island in Essex, has to look after her three other daughters Jazmine, five, and twins Yala and Tamara Brade, four.
To help them Mr Geary’s mother, Valleri Ruthven, has set up a JustGiving page people can donate to; crowdfunding.justgiving.com/valleri-ruthven
