Cancer dad Tony Ferguson vows to be home soon

Oct 11 2009 Sunday Sun

A FATHER who has battled cancer seven times has undergone a successful transplant in his bid to conquer the killer disease.

Tony Ferguson, 47, is praying a bone marrow transplant will once and for all rid him of Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, having fought the cancer since 1995.

The dad-of-two, of Ryton, Gateshead, went through the simple procedure last week.

But he now faces an anxious three-day wait to see if his body accepts the new bone marrow.

Determined to beat the killer disease, however, Tony has already told his wife he intends to be out of hospital and back home with his family this month.

His wife Christine said: “This is it, there’s no going back now . . . he’s being very positive and the doctors say ‘so far, so good’.

“Different people respond to transplants in very different ways, but he wants to be home by the end of October.

“We can say that the transplant procedure itself has been a success but it’s still early days.

“It takes about two weeks for the good cells to find where they are supposed to be, and then latch on to where they should be, so we have a few more days to wait.”

Without the surgery, doctors warned Tony he may not live to see the end of the year.

In the build-up, he was apprehensive as he was also told there is a 30% chance of him rejecting the marrow.

Tony, who shares a home in Ryton, Gateshead, with Christine and his sons Daniel, 18, and Anthony, 22, had worked as a stonemason when he was first struck down with the cancer of the lymphatic system.

He had to wait on the transplant register for many months until a potential donor was found.