Sam Beevor
Sam's London Marathon 2016 for MPN Voice
Fundraising for MPN Voice (Guy's and St Thomas' Charity)
Story
The 2015 Virgin London Marathon weekend was poignant for me. MPN/MPD voice broke the news to me that I had blood cancer.......
I spent the 2015 VLM weekend on MPN Voice website. After two mini-strokes in quick succession at the age of 30 I knew I had Essential Thrombocythemia. Until April 2015 it had been treated with a fairly nasty drug called Anagrelide. I was reading up on my impending (and now past) switch from Anagrelide to Interferon. What I did not know until that weekend and on the MPD Voice website was that I had cancer. Blood cancer. Why was a website telling me what no doctor had in two years? I was stunned and I am not too proud to admit that I was scared. But by the end of that weekend my resolve to secure a place was renewed to a new level, and I knew exactly who I would be doing it for and whose vest I would be wearing as I run up the Mall in April this year.
On discovering the news that my condition was TECHNICALLY cancer I reassessed the situation. I identified my information gaps and I sought to close them so that I could then undertake an informed course of action. MPN voice serviced almost all of the information I needed right then. So the very thing that had broken some pretty severe news to me was the very thing that reassured me. Knowledge. Well crafted, well based and crucially exceptionally well presented information.
I realized that my situation was unchanged. ‘ What is in a name?’ My medical state was no different. A fact I confirmed with one of the country’s leading hematologists at Oxford University Hospitals the following week when I went to change treatment.
I benefit from the term Myeloproliferative Neoplasm because it means I don’t have to say I have blood cancer. The charity that broke the bad news to me is the charity that champions the term that saves me from cancer, both practically and in the most literal sense! Because MPN will never attract the attention, the media coverage or the sympathy of cancer I must do everything I can to support its important and valued work.
Regrettably interferon was unsuccessful in putting the condition into remission so I am back on Anagrelide - forever! until someone finds a new way to treat it.........
I spent the 2015 VLM weekend on MPN Voice website. After two mini-strokes in quick succession at the age of 30 I knew I had Essential Thrombocythemia. Until April 2015 it had been treated with a fairly nasty drug called Anagrelide. I was reading up on my impending (and now past) switch from Anagrelide to Interferon. What I did not know until that weekend and on the MPD Voice website was that I had cancer. Blood cancer. Why was a website telling me what no doctor had in two years? I was stunned and I am not too proud to admit that I was scared. But by the end of that weekend my resolve to secure a place was renewed to a new level, and I knew exactly who I would be doing it for and whose vest I would be wearing as I run up the Mall in April this year.
On discovering the news that my condition was TECHNICALLY cancer I reassessed the situation. I identified my information gaps and I sought to close them so that I could then undertake an informed course of action. MPN voice serviced almost all of the information I needed right then. So the very thing that had broken some pretty severe news to me was the very thing that reassured me. Knowledge. Well crafted, well based and crucially exceptionally well presented information.
I realized that my situation was unchanged. ‘ What is in a name?’ My medical state was no different. A fact I confirmed with one of the country’s leading hematologists at Oxford University Hospitals the following week when I went to change treatment.
I benefit from the term Myeloproliferative Neoplasm because it means I don’t have to say I have blood cancer. The charity that broke the bad news to me is the charity that champions the term that saves me from cancer, both practically and in the most literal sense! Because MPN will never attract the attention, the media coverage or the sympathy of cancer I must do everything I can to support its important and valued work.
Regrettably interferon was unsuccessful in putting the condition into remission so I am back on Anagrelide - forever! until someone finds a new way to treat it.........