Family Helps 7-Year-Old Newcastle Boy Fight For His Life

A Newcastle family is fighting to save their 7-year-old son. The boy suffers from a rare form of leukemia and needs a bone marrow transplant. But there's a catch: The donor can't be a relative.

Trey Freeman was born without an immune system. He's had two bone marrow transplants, and his sister was the donor, but her cells aren't functioning well in his body, so his family is turning to the public to find a bone marrow match to save his life.

Trey is being treated at Medical City Hospital in Dallas. His father Jeremy Freeman takes turns with his wife Emily traveling back and forth to Dallas from Newcastle while looking after their four other children and serving as Pastor of First Baptist Church of Newcastle.

“Our doctors tell us there's no other known case exactly like Trey's to be immune deficient and to develop and LGL leukemia, six years post-transplant,” Jeremy Freeman says. “I think the hardest part is just we don't know if anything's going to work, so we're hoping, we're praying.”

He uses FaceTime to check on Trey's condition and says his face has swollen significantly over the last year.

Newcastle Public Schools raised more than $8,000 for Make-A-Wish to make Trey's wish of going to Disney World come true, but Jeremy says Trey is too weak to go, and he can't hold back tears thinking of the pain his son feels.

"You want desperately to fix something that you can't fix,” Jeremy says. “It's out of your hands totally, and you do everything possible medically, but at the end of the day, it's in God's hands."

Jeremy says all Trey needs is a bone marrow donor to help give him a life-saving transplant, so his church is holding a bone marrow drive Wednesday.

"You know if we can find a match, again, there's no guarantee, but it will at least put him in a position to have a chance," Jeremy says.

The “Pray for Trey” drive is May 8 at First Baptist Church in Newcastle from 5 to 8 p.m. You have to be an adult from ages 18 to 44. Staff will take a mouth swab and will contact you if you are a match.

You can visit http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/prayfortrey for more information on how you can help.