‘He’d only just left school. He’d started uni. He had more independence. His world was opening up, BUT… ‘: Aussie rugby player Rowan, 18, went for a routine blood test and days later he was fighting ℓeᴜkɑemiɑ

When Rowan Tong-Law went for a routine blood test, cancer was the furthest thing from anyone’s mind.

The Brisbane teenager had just started university, was playing rugby, tutoring local students, and enjoying the independence that came with adulthood.

He had recently bought his first car and proudly installed new lights himself. Life was moving exactly as it should for an 18-year-old finding his feet.

Then a phone call on September 17, 2024 changed everything.

Rowan had been taking Roaccutane for acne, which required regular blood tests every six to eight weeks, and previous results had been completely normal. There were no warning signs, no unexplained illnesses, and no symptoms serious enough to raise alarm.

‘He wasn’t feeling unwell,’ his mother, Bronwyn Tong, told the Daily Mail.

‘He was probably tired, but as tired as any normal 18-year-old who was going out with friends, studying, and playing sport.’

The dermatologist who ordered the blood test initially called Bronwyn but could not legally discuss the results because Rowan had recently turned 18. Hours later, Rowan called his mother crying.

‘He said, “Mum, I’ve got leukaemia. I’ve got cancer. The doctors told me I’ve got to go straight to hospital”,’ she recalled.

Within hours, Rowan was admitted to the Royal Brisbane Hospital where he would remain for the next five weeks.

Doctors diagnosed Rowan with acute myeloid leukaemia (AML), an aggressive blood cancer that develops rapidly.

While specialists told the family the disease had been detected early, they also explained that AML moves so quickly that early diagnosis does not necessarily improve the prognosis.

‘Within a couple of weeks he would have started showing symptoms. But this type of cancer hits pretty hard and fast,’ Bronwyn said.

For Bronwyn and her husband Bob, the diagnosis was almost impossible to comprehend.

Only hours earlier, Rowan had been attending university practicals, and now he was facing a life-threatening illness. As parents, they found themselves grappling with a reality no family expects.

‘His life was really just starting to take off,’ Bronwyn said.

‘He’d only just left school. He’d started uni. He had more independence. His world was opening up.’

Watching Rowan begin treatment was heartbreaking.

Doctors launched him into an intensive induction phase of chemotherapy designed to hit the cancer as hard as possible. Because Rowan was young and otherwise healthy, they could use chemotherapy doses that many older patients would not tolerate.

From September 2024 until January 2025, Rowan spent months moving between hospital wards, chemotherapy suites, and medical appointments. The treatment was relentless.

He endured intravenous chemotherapy, oral medications, scans, biopsies, and countless blood tests. The drugs devastated his immune system, leaving him vulnerable to serious infections.

At one point, a catheter inserted into a major vein became infected and bacteria travelled to his heart, creating a growth on one of his heart valves.

Doctors were forced to stop chemotherapy for five weeks while they fought the infection.

Instead of focusing on cancer treatment, Rowan spent Christmas travelling to hospital every day to receive powerful intravenous antibiotics.

‘Every 24 hours we’d go back to hospital so he could be hooked up to another bag of antibiotics,’ Bronwyn said.

The heart infection was only one complication. A skin infection behind his ear developed into an abscess that required surgery. He battled nausea, recurring fevers, and repeated emergency hospital visits.

‘We lived on tenterhooks. Any infection could have been fatal,’ Bronwyn said.

Then came another devastating moment: the chemotherapy had not worked as well as doctors had hoped.

While Rowan responded to treatment, he failed to reach the deep remission specialists wanted to see after such intensive chemotherapy.

In January 2025, doctors delivered the news that would define the family’s future. Most likely, Rowan would need a stem cell transplant to survive.

For Bronwyn, one of the hardest parts was watching her son experience things no teenager should ever have to face.

Because Rowan was legally an adult, he was treated in adult wards rather than paediatric units. Many of the patients sharing rooms beside him were decades older and facing terminal diagnoses.

Multiple times, Rowan lay awake listening as other patients discussed funeral plans or received news they only had weeks or months left to live.

‘He would hear people sobbing beside him,’ Bronwyn said.

‘Not many 18-year-olds would ever have to share a room with someone being told they’re not going to make it.’

The emotional burden was enormous.

Rowan lost his long curly hair as treatment intensified, but friends from school responded in a way the family will never forget when 17 of his mates arrived at the hospital having shaved their heads in solidarity.

Despite everything happening around him, Rowan refused to give up on his education.

Doctors advised him to withdraw from university because treatment would be too demanding. Instead, he completed his entire first year from a hospital bed.

Lectures were streamed online, and the university organised separate exam arrangements to protect him from infection risks. Between treatments, blood tests, and medical procedures, Rowan studied. Remarkably, he passed every subject.

‘It gave him something to focus on. He wasn’t going to let cancer take that away from him,’ Bronwyn said.

Today, Rowan is 20-years-old and back studying physiotherapy and working with the University of Queensland rugby program, strapping players, providing first aid, and staying connected to the sport he loves.

From the outside, he looks like a young man rebuilding his life – but underneath, a clock is ticking.

Rowan’s cancer remains present at low levels.

Every three months he undergoes a bone marrow biopsy, and each result determines whether he can continue living normally or whether the disease is beginning to grow again.

‘We’re basically waiting to see when the cancer takes off,’ Bronwyn said.

At some point, doctors expect it will. When that happens, a stem cell transplant becomes his only remaining option.

‘There isn’t another treatment pathway they’re offering him at this stage,’ she said.

The challenge is finding a donor. Rowan’s brother and sister were tested immediately after diagnosis, but neither was a full match.

Finding a donor is especially difficult because Rowan comes from a mixed-ethnicity background, as his mother is Asian and his father is Caucasian.

For patients of Northern European ancestry, donor matches are often easier to find because donor registries are much larger and better represented. For people of mixed ethnic backgrounds, the search can become a global hunt.

‘It really is a needle-in-a-haystack situation,’ Bronwyn said.

‘There might be one person in the world who matches him, but if they’re not registered, we’ll never find them.’

The family’s search has expanded far beyond Australia. Supporters have organised donor drives in Canada, the United States, Hong Kong and the United Kingdom. Community groups have hosted swabbing events specifically in Rowan’s honour.

Back home, a campaign called Register for Rowan has transformed into a national awareness movement.

After Rowan bravely returned to his former school to speak about his diagnosis during a Leukaemia Foundation fundraiser, support exploded.

Friends built websites and social media pages, businesses donated billboard space. Soon, 27 billboards appeared around Australia encouraging people to join the stem cell donor registry.

For Bronwyn and Bob, the campaign was born from desperation but quickly became about something bigger.

Australia has one of the lowest donor registration rates among comparable countries. Many communities, including First Nations Australians, Pacific Islanders, Māori and people from mixed ethnic backgrounds, remain significantly underrepresented.

Without donors from similar ethnic backgrounds, many patients simply never find a match.

‘People don’t know how easy it is. It’s painless – it’s just a cheek swab,’ Bronwyn said.

Bob has since stepped away from work to devote himself full-time to donor recruitment, approaching schools, organising events, and encouraging more Australians to register.

‘If there’s someone around the corner who is a match, we want that person on the registry. That person could save our son’s life,’ Bronwyn said.

For now, Rowan remains in a holding pattern between the life he is trying to build and the transplant he knows may be waiting.

The next bone marrow biopsy results could arrive any day – and those results will help determine what comes next.

Until then, the family continues searching.

Because somewhere, perhaps in Australia or perhaps on the other side of the world, could be the one person capable of saving Rowan’s life.

Across Australia, around 145,000 people are currently living with blood cancer and at least 6,000 die every year. For many patients, a stem cell transplant is their only chance of survival.

The Life Saving List, co-founded by Josephine O’Brien and her late husband Liam, is pushing for long-term national investment in the Australian Stem Cell Donor Registry, a larger and more diverse donor pool, and a system that reduces pressure on families forced to search desperately for matches themselves.

Australians aged between 17 and 35 can join the stem cell donor registry through a simple cheek swab via Australian Bone Marrow Donor Registry or by visiting Australian Red Cross Lifeblood.