TIME is running out for young Callum Crawford in his battle with leukemia.
Now his parents, Alan and Karen are appealing for a hero to save their son's life by being a bone marrow donor.
SHEILA HAMILTON meets a family clinging on to hope
A COUPLE of weeks ago, Callum Crawford looked his mum in the eye and asked: "Am I going to die, mum?" His mother Karen admits she didn't know how to answer him.
"What could I say?" says Karen Crawford helplessly.
It's not the type of conversation you expect to have with your child," sighs her husband, Alan, a prison officer at Greenock.
He is only 11, but Callum is old enough to know he could die if the right bone marrow donor isn't found soon.
"We don't see any point in hiding the truth from him," says Karen, 37, snatching a quick coffee with her husband, Alan, 47, in the canteen at Yorkhill Hospital.
"But it's horrible. He's known kids here who have died. And he says things such as he wants special songs at his funeral.
"I was just so shocked but I had to hold myself together until I could leave the room for a good cry."
They all live from day to day, hoping that daily checks of the Anthony Nolan Bone Marrow Register will reveal a match.
And they are urging people to attend special clinics being set up for donors in Clydebank on Sunday and next Tuesday.
"We know it is unlikely we will personally find a match for Callum from the clinics," says Alan. "But Karen and I feel we need to take positive steps to increase the register of potential donors.
"Perhaps someone reading Callum's story will go on to help someone else and another family will be saved the agonising wait we are coping with."
Usually siblings are the most likely source - there is a one in four chance, and Callum has three brothers, Martin, 17, an apprentice decorative floor layer, Jonathan, 14, Adam, 4, and a six-year-old sister, Cerys.
But although Adam and Cerys are a tissue match for each other, sadly, none of the family is a match for Callum.
Callum was first diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia - the aggressive adult form of the disease - in 2004. He spent five months in Schiehallion Ward in Yorkhill, enduring four gruelling blocks of chemotherapy and 30 days in isolation each time before going into remission.
"He made an amazing recovery first time round," says Alan.
"There were times he couldn't keep up the same but he tried his hardest anyway and never used his illness as an excuse.
"And then to get smacked down like this "
The family discovered the leukemia had come back when Callum went for a routine two monthly check in March.
"It was total disbelief and devastation," Karen says wearily. "The first time round was bad enough, but to have to go through it all again "
"When he took ill in 2004, he was pale and looked ill and was off his food and sleeping all the time.
"This time it was such a shock because there was no clue. He was so well and always outside doing boy things.
"He kept saying Why me? What have I done? It's not fair. I got better. Why have I got it again?'"
In a few days time, after a short spell at home, he is due to return to the Schiehallion ward for his third and final block of chemotherapy.
His only option after that is a bone marrow transplant. Haematology consultant Dr Brenda Gibson had hoped to carry out a transplant by now but has decided to give Callum a third block to keep him in remission and buy him some extra time for a donor to be found.
"Only myself and Alan and the doctors and nurses are allowed into his room," says his mum.
"All his brothers and sisters can do is wave to him through the window of his room.
"We're a really close family and it really breaks us all up.
"Cerys keeps a picture of him under her pillow and Adam keeps asking when Callum is coming home."
Callum was suffering from cabin fever last week when his counts were down, and to cheer him up Dr Gibson decided to let his brother Jonathan into the room.
"We got Jonathan scrubbed up and gowned," says his dad. "But we had told Callum that there was a doctor coming to see him and then Jonathan walked in.
"His eyes were like saucers and he just cried and cried and then Jonathan started to cry and even the nurse started crying.
"Callum said Oh, Jonny, I missed you so much. I can't believe I'm seeing you'. He wouldn't let go of him."
The family are buoyed up by the support of the doctors and nurses in Schiehallion - in particular Dr Gibson - and by their families and Alan's work colleagues.
And they couldn't be more grateful to Callum's teachers at St Eunan's Primary, who contacted the Anthony Nolan Trust about setting up the special donor clinic for Callum in Clydebank.
But in common with other families whose children are long-term patients in Yorkhill, their lives are suspended as they juggle time with Callum and their other children.
Karen and Alan are ships that pass in the night because Callum can't bear to be without one or other of his parents.
While Karen holds a bedside vigil with Callum from Monday to Friday, Alan stays at home in Clydebank with the other children. At the weekend, they swop shifts.
Whoever is on hospital duty is virtually living off canteen food and sandwiches and sleeps on a chair in Callum's room which folds down into a bed.
His room has to be sterile and only the doctors and nurses and his parents, scrubbed and gowned, are allowed contact.
"It's horrendous to watch," says his mum. "He has to have eye drops every two hours because the chemotherapy dries his eyes and then there's the aftermath."
There are the long hours of waiting as Callum lies pale and still or retching with sickness or diarrhoea, watching his weight fall off.
He has no resistance to infection until his blood count rises again and last week, he caught shingles because his immune system was so low.
Karen talks lovingly about her son, who is a keen Celtic supporter and has met some of the club's star players. "He's a wee character. Even though he's lying there suffering, he would always put someone else before himself, and he never moans whatever the nurses have to do to him.
"And he's very, very kind and thoughtful. He's always buying or making little things for his brothers and sisters or for the nurses here."
Both parents say they had never realised how this illness could take over people's lives until they were actually in the situation.
"It's hard going and it's like being in confinement yourself," Karen admits. "It's as if you're in a little bubble.
"You watch the hospital dramas such as Jimmy's and you think you've seen it all, but when it happens to you, it's just your worst nightmare."
The next few weeks are going to be extra tough on the Crawfords.
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