When he was just 20-months-old Dilly was diagnosed with leukaemia and is now in desperate need of a life-saving bone marrow transplant.
Now, celebrities like Mark Wright and Michelle Keegan have backed the desperate mum’s campaign to sign up to the blood stem cell register.
Speaking to The Sun, Amy, 35, said her son, affectionately known as Dilly Aksehir, had been the most smiley happy, little boy, which was why when he stopped kicking the football – she knew something was wrong.
The family of four live in London and it was during the first lockdown in May 2020, Amy said that Dilly started to limp.
Amy said: “I started to notice other signs, he was pale, had swollen lymph nodes around his neck and armpits and had bruises around the eyes…”
Following a GP appointment, the family were then referred to the A&E department at the Royal London Hospital.
“I thought he’d just be sent home with antibiotics, I never thought it would be anything like this”, Amy said.
Medics at the hospital took an X-ray and told Amy there was nothing wrong with Dilly’s bones, that there was no break or fracture.
They told Amy they would need to do a blood test, which she said didn’t initially ring alarm bells. But after the blood test, medics told Amy to call her partner, Oguz Aksehir.
Images: Amy Ramsey
Amy said: “They took us into a side room and told us that he had leukaemia.
From there, Amy was told her son faced three years of treatment. He has been in and out of hospital with infections, but initially he had a great response to chemotherapy, which he was having to make sure the leukaemia didn’t return.
Dilly turned 4 yesterday (August 23), but instead of planning his party, mum Amy is now rallying support for people to come forward to be a donor.
“If they find a match, we will have to move to a ward two weeks before so they can blast him with strong chemo that will get rid of the old bone marrow.
“When we were first told I couldn’t stop crying. Our daughter Aiyla is only two-years-old and Dilly was diagnosed when she was just four-months.
“We’ve never really been able to do anything as a family.”
DKMS is an international charity dedicated to the fight against blood cancer and blood disorders, you can order a free swab kit from them by registering at www.dkms.org.uk.
As Dilly has a mixed ethnicity with his father’s Turkish background and his mother’s English background they have said this has made it more challenging to find a donor and are appealing to as many people to donate to help save his life.
