Not so much today, but it is ten years ago today that I first had an inkling that things were not quite right – little did I know then that life would never be quite the same again!<\/p>\n
I was in America on a business trip, and when the business activities had finished, I stayed on to take a holiday, joined by my family. We were staying with friends in North Carolina and I developed a rash and itchy palms. Eventually I went to the local health centre and had one of the most comprehensive check ups ever – including blood tests and x-rays. The eventual diagnosis was that I had an enlarged spleen, indicative of several things, including (in passing) leukaemia. Whatever it was, I was advised to get it investigated, but I went away with a prescription for anti-biotics. (I wonder if he thought I had Lyme’s disease)<\/p>\n
On the basis that rare things are rare, I took the anti-biotics, paid the bill (so glad I had medical insurance for the holiday!) and returned to the UK three weeks later and (because I was based in London at the time) I ended up at St Thomas’s for investigation and an eventual diagnosis of Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma – two years later re-diagnosed as mantle cell lymphoma.<\/p>\n
And here, 10 years, two self donated transplants and one unrelated donor transplants later, I am! A journey not without its moments of suspense and drama! – And here thanks to the advances in medical science and the team at Guy’s and St Thomas’s, and also Southampton General Hospital! (And I did ring up that Doctor in the US to thank him!)<\/p>\n
So to all those and those who have supported me over the years, a very big THANK YOU!<\/p>\n
Onwards and upwards!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Not so much today, but it is ten years ago today that I first had an inkling that things were not quite right – little did I know then that life would never be quite the same again! I was in America on a business trip, and when the business activities had finished, I stayed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-928","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-getting-my-life-back"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.boraston.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/928","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.boraston.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.boraston.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.boraston.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.boraston.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=928"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.boraston.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/928\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.boraston.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.boraston.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.boraston.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}