Mother whose son lived in a sealed bubble, now improves lives for others (From Darlington and Stockton Times)

Mother whose son lived in a sealed bubble, now improves lives for others

5:00am Saturday 9th March 2013 in News By Emily Flanagan, Reporter

CECILE Spencer has been through several lifesaving treatments with her youngest child and is now helping to improve the lives of other families.

Her eight-year-old son Kyle was diagnosed with a rare immune-system deficiency disorder at just a few weeks old.

He was the youngest ever child to have such a diagnosis, and underwent his first full bone marrow transplant at nine months old.

But, unusually, his body rejected the bone marrow and he had to have a second transplant in February last year, from a live donor at Newcastle’s Great North Children’s Hospital.

Mrs Spencer lived with her son at the hospital. He had to spend months in a clinically sealed room, or “bubble” at the hospital following his operation, as any kind of infection could have proved fatal.

Their only link with the outside world and her daughter, Ashleigh, ten, and husband Peter, was via Skype on a laptop.

Kyle said: “It was nice for her to be there.”

Kyle is now back at Broomfield School in Northallerton and although he is on medication, he is enjoying a relatively normal life.

Now Mrs Spencer, who works as a theatre nurse at the town's Friarage Hospital, and the rest of the family have been steadily raising money to equip all the bubble units with laptops and Skype. 

She said: “Our aim was really to improve communication between the isolation unit and the big, wide world, especially because the kids are in a tiny little area and sometimes too poorly to get out of bed."

The family have so far managed to raise £1,900 for the Great North Children’s Hospital’s Bubble Foundation.