I was lucky that my brush with leukaemia in 2018 was with a variant for which there was an effective treatment. For hairy-cell leukaemia I had a course of chemo administered as series of daily injections over the course of a week. I was typically in and out of the out-patients chemo unit at the Luton & Dunstable Hospital in around 15-20 minutes. I didn’t even suffer any noticeable side-effects from the injections. I was very conscious that the treatments for most of my fellow visitors to the unit were much more gruelling.

As with most chemo, my immune system was knocked out. Just
at the wrong moment, I managed to pick up a lung infection and spent three weeks in hospital as the brilliant haematology team at the L&D pumped me full of antibiotics and antivirals to fend off the infection I couldn’t beat unaided. Thankfully, I was well enough to leave hospital a week before Christmas. Following a bone-marrow biopsy in the spring of 2019, I was declared to be in remission.

As I’m going to be running the Virtual London Marathon on 3 October, I thought I would try to raise funds to help Blood Cancer UK develop  similarly effective treatments for the remaining, more challenging, forms of blood cancer and leukaemia.

All donations would be greatly appreciated.