ROMSEY'S Hartley family are at last on the home straight after three years of transplant trauma.

Seven-year-old Luke, the youngest of the four brothers who needed bone marrow transplants to overcome a rare life-threatening condition, finally underwent his treatment at London's Great Ormond Street on Wednesday.

His brother Nathan was the donor and he will remain under close observation in Great Ormond Street while specialists check that all went well.

Speaking yesterday afternoon shortly after arriving home from Luke's bedside mum Allison said: "It will take about 12 to 14 days for his immune system to start coming back in. Luke had a very good dose of Nathan's bone marrow infused. The infusion took about an hour. The doctors were very pleased with the way it went. It will be another six months to a year before we know how successful it has been."

Luke's father David remained at his son's London hospital bedside.

Luke went to Great Ormond Street in late May and finished his course of chemotherapy on Sunday. Afterwards, his father David said all was going to plan and that he had "tolerated it well".

But he added: "That being said, he did have a reaction to one of his chemo drugs that gave him a seizure.

"But in 15 minutes he was 100 per cent again and a subsequent CT scan showed no effects on the brain - but obviously very frightening for Allison (Mrs Hartley, the boys' mother) at the time."

Mr Hartley explained that Luke had not enjoyed being in isolation at Great Ormond Street: "Partly, this is to do with the extensive hydration that he has just finished (four days of being hooked up to a machine infusion of 100 ml of water every hour); partly because the chemo is now kicking in; and because he enjoyed playing with the other boys on the ward who were also allowed out."

He also said that Luke had needed a blood transfusion in the run-up to the transplant and appealed to friends and well-wishers: "Please pray that this transplant is a success and that Luke is not traumatised by the whole experience."

The four brothers, Joshua, 15, Nathan, 13, Daniel, 11, and Luke were diagnosed with the rare disease known as X-linked Lymphoproliferative Syndrome in November, 2003 and were told that they needed bone marrow transplants.

Joshua's took place in June 2004, followed by Daniel's in November of the same year and Nathan's in December, 2005.

Now the family are actively trying to help spare other families the trauma of transplants by raising funds for the XLP Research Trust, which they founded in 2005. Details can be found at xlpresearchtrust.org