Brave toddler Finn Mackin is too young to know that the selfless actions of more than 50 strangers saved his life.
Devoted mum Siobhan Rolinson and dad Stephen Mackin will forever be grateful to all the people who donated blood and bone marrow to save their son.
The courageous Mearns two-year-old was struck down with a rare and deadly form of leukaemia when he was just 11 months old.
It caused tumours to grow behind his eye and on his brain.
Against all odds the tot is now cancer free, after a life-saving bone marrow transplant and at least 50 blood transfusions – all before he was two.
Finn, who will be three in February, also endured a year of gruelling cancer treatment, more than 40 general anaesthetics and months at a time in isolation in hospitals in Aberdeen and Glasgow.
His mum appealing for Scots to give blood and join the bone marrow register.
The 30-year-old from Stonehaven said: “Without all these donors, Finn definitely would not have made it.
“There were some times he need blood transfusions every day for a few days. He must have had about 50 in total, as well as platelet transfusions.
“And without the bone marrow transplant they said his cancer would have come back really quickly.
“We were very lucky because Finn had loads of matches available to him and he got the perfect match. So if this one had fallen though, there were others waiting.
“But some people can’t even get one match.”
The family’s ordeal began just a few weeks before Finn’s first birthday.
He had been unwell and his eye had become swollen.
Miss Rolinson took Finn to see her GP who gave her antibiotics to treat a suspected an eye infection.
But when his eye failed to improve, she took him to accident and emergency, where scans confirmed he had a tumour behind his eye.
Miss Rolinson, who is also mum to Leo, six months, said: “It was so big compared to his eye, it was pushing his eyeball out of the way.
“We had to wait a few days to get a diagnosis and I was expecting to be told it was some kind of eye cancer. But then they said it was leukaemia.”
The day after he was diagnosed he was taken into the Royal Aberdeen Children’s Hospital for the start of four months of intense chemotherapy.
Doctors thought the drugs had worked but just as Finn was about to go home, he developed an ear infection and one side of his faced became paralysed.
The cancer was back and tests confirmed he now had a tumour on his brain.
Finn’s parents were warned the only way to prevent a second relapse was a bone marrow transplant.
Miss Rolinson said: “To get him ready for the transplant he was given the strongest chemo his heart could handle, to wipe out his system.”
Tests have now confirmed the transplant worked and a year on there are still no signs of cancer.
Miss Rolinson said: “Through it all, Finn never once moaned or was grumpy.
“We are now looking forward to Christmas. We couldn’t really get excited last year because he was just out of hospital and he wasn’t allowed to be around other kids.”
To register as a donor visit www.dkms.org.uk or www.antonynolan.org or www.scotblood.co.uk.
