A NURSERY nurse is urging people to sign up to the Anthony Nolan Trust – and give her the gift of life.

Lauren Gladden, 23, has Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, a form of cancer, and desperately needs a bone marrow transplant.

Chemotherapy has not worked and doctors have told Lauren, of Deene Close, Adderbury, near Banbury, a transplant is her only hope.

Last Saturday, family friends organised a Anthony Nolan Trust recruitment event at Adderbury’s annual Party in the Park – and more than 50 people signed up to the register.

Organiser Linda Leslie, who has known Lauren since she was a toddler, said: “Lauren knows it is unlikely there will be a match from Party in the Park, but there are about 16,000 other people waiting for a bone marrow transplant so it may help one of them.”

Lauren added: “They have searched the UK register but at the moment they haven’t got a donor.

“They have said they have got the rest of the world register to look at.

“If I find a donor I can hopefully get back to normal and get back to life.

“Until I find a donor I have got to carry on having treatment.”

Doctors had hoped her sister Danielle would be a match, but she turned out not to be.

At the moment Miss Gladden has chemotherapy to stop the disease spreading.

She is unable to work and suffers side effects from the treatment including nausea, tiredness and fluid retention.

Lauren said: “As soon as friends heard about the register lots of people were signing up.

“Even if they are not a match for me they can save someone else.

“I just have to stay strong and keep being positive.”

Miss Gladden’s cancer was diagnosed in April 2008 after she found a lump on her shoulder.

Initially doctors thought she had pulled a muscle or a cyst, but a biopsy revealed it was leukaemia.

She said: “I had six months’ treatment at the Brodey Centre, Banbury, and it was looking good.

“But in January it flared up again, just as I was going back to work.”

She had a course of intensive chemotherapy at the John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford, followed by stem cell treatment using her own bone marrow, but it did not work.

  • According to the Anthony Nolan Trust, the charity saves two lives every day.

More than 400,000 people are on the bone marrow register but more are desperately needed.

Between 1974 and 2008, 7,000 people got the chance of life thanks to the trust.

To join the register you need to fill in a simple application form and give a saliva sample.

It is open to people aged 18 to 40, but people can stay on the register until their 60th birthday.

You must be in general good health and weight more than eight stone/51kg.

To get an application form write to The Anthony Nolan Trust, 75-87 Agincourt Road, London, NW3 2NU Ring 0303 303 0303 or visit anthonynolan.org.uk