How do you feel about your masculinity? How has this affected how you feel about yourself?

Given where I came from, the job that I did and how important masculinity was within my role, because I’d very often be knocking on somebody’s door and because I was involved in some serious crime investigations, including drugs, be throwing somebody to the floor, basically, to try and make sure that we got the evidence. So masculinity was a big part of my life.

I felt vulnerable when I was ill, I felt really vulnerable and for maybe a couple of years afterwards, felt very frustrated, I felt very weak and frustrated. And I think that’s to do with physically not being able to do things, but also that I had no role, nothing. I’d been a police officer, I was a police officer, I was a detective constable, acting detective so I was somebody whereas all that had been taken away from me.

I was lucky that we moved here to [town], to another location where people didn’t know me as Ian the policeman. If I’d have stayed where we were I think I would still have that on my shoulders and it would be difficult, but down here they don’t actually know me as Ian who was in the police and did this and that. So that’s made it a bit easier for me.

And I think I still like my masculinity because I’m playing football again, five a side for two hours a night on a Friday with the lads and I’m playing badminton. So yeah I think I’m back to where I was and I’m enjoying them even more now than I used to, so my masculinity I’m proud I think it’s still there. Yeah.

Do you think all this has affected the way you feel about your masculinity at all?

No, not at all. I am who I am and what happened to me was no-one’s fault, just the luck of the draw, and it doesn’t make me less of a man. It makes me more of a man actually.

In what way?

That I could stand up to this damn thing and beat it, with the help of others. And I don’t need to prove that I’m a man to anyone. I never have done. And I know exactly where I’m coming from and I get on with things. You know, I don’t sort of, well Joyce and I, all the years we’ve been married, like all families you have your ups and downs but you’re always there and never have to prove anything to one another. And I think it’s people who, they come close, the human being what he is, none of us are the same, and there are people feel less of who they are, and I’ve never done that.

Do you think having this illness has affected the way you feel about your masculinity at all?

You asked for it you’ll get it in technical terms. Some of the chemotherapies made me wonder about my virility in the real sense of could I have an erection. I think we boiled it down, because I did go and speak to the GP, I think we boiled it down more to being the things that they’re treating me with for ordinary blood pressure. And we worked out that they’re likely to be damaging to the libido, but then I’ve got to consider my age. I’m not necessarily going to be Picasso. No I don’t feel in the sense less masculine. I did at times feel less able to be masculine but I don’t worry about that now. I think I just accept it as part of the age I am and the treatments I’m receiving. And we get along fine.

Did it cause problems at the time?

Not, well for the first time, I have never been in life a person who couldn’t be typically male and have an erection almost as I needed. After treatment I found that was much more difficult and so my psyche was to an extent struggling with that and that’s why I went to see the GP. But I think I’ve chatted it out and my wife and I talk about it so I think we’re not in the least worried now. Just, you know, that’s the way it is.

Given everything that you’ve said about how you felt about your body, I wondered if it had caused you any sexual difficulties during your illness. I guess there weren’t many opportunities for you and your partner?

No there wasn’t. It was because obviously my legs and they were putting things in my legs and I was so weak. Again, sexual opportunities they were very few and far between. And obviously you didn’t feel you wanted to because, again it’s the furthest thing from your mind. So that’s difficult, and also because your body is different in every way, because obviously being a woman you haven’t got a hair on you, you kind of feel embarrassed of the way you look and you don’t want people, anybody looking at you. So you find you cover yourself up a lot more. So again that didn’t help with the relationship.

But as much as you try not to, or he would say, ‘You still look the same to me. You know you didn’t. You know, I’ve dealt, I’ve a mirror. I’ve got eyes. I can see I don’t look the same. Like I say I was seven stone. I looked ill. You could see I was ill. I was so pale in comparison to a milk bottle. And I looked horrendous, I know I did. So you just feel so unattractive that obviously sex is the last thing you want to think about, the last thing on earth you want to be doing. And again it’s not the first thing on your mind, for sure. And then obviously taking your clothes off in front of people is again such a frightening experience because it’s the last thing you want to do.

And I remember one time they did let me come home with the little taps in my leg and you’re just frightened that the slightest movement or knock is going to obviously put the needle out or anything like that. So during that time it didn’t happen very often. And it was the furthest thing from my mind because, you know, it’s not the first thing you think about. And the way you look and you know that you look different, it’s the last thing you think about, to be honest with you. And you just, not even in front of your partner, even like my mum and that, you just didn’t want to get undressed in front of people because I was so thin, so scrawny and pale and horrible that, no you didn’t get dressed or undressed in front of people.

So did the way you felt about your body affect your sex life?

Yes.

Would you be prepared to talk a bit about that?

I felt very ugly. I felt too tired to even think about anything. I mean at points when I was being hugged, even being hugged it, because my partner’s arms went round me a different way and fitted me differently, I just didn’t like it. I just, no, I felt kind of uncomfortable about it and I felt insecure about being seen. I felt very let down by my body, especially when I was very weak and I was home, in the first year when I was home at points. I mean any sort of, let’s face it when you’re tired and you’re exhausted and you feel that sick, it’s not exactly conducive to have a nice cosy sexual night. Do you know what I mean? It’s not going to happen and it didn’t happen. And it was fine. It was never an issue, it wasn’t even discussed, you know, it was a case of, ‘What do you need right now?’ ‘I need a bag of Cheesy Wotsits and a bar of chocolate because I can’t eat anything else. ‘Fine. That’s what we’ll get you. Curled up on the couch and, you know, good funny DVDs or whatever. Comedy.

But even things like getting in and out of the bath was really difficult, and getting up and down off chairs was really difficult, and I felt really, I don’t know, awkward, and it just felt alien so I didn’t even like touching my body. You know, I would be in the bath and I’d look at my legs and where I used to have really, really good muscles it was just this kind of saggy flesh and I be quite put off by it, so it’s not exactly conducive to having a healthy sex life when you’re feeling like that about your body.

What kind of impact did your illness have on your relationship with your boyfriend?

We had actually split. He was totally devastated but we’d remained friends. And he was devastated but I didn’t know that I was so ill at that time and when he got the call to say that I was there he was at the hospital right away. And he really didn’t think I was going to make it. So, yes, we got back together again. Whether or not that was because I was ill or I don’t know, it was fine. It was good at the time and we’re still friends now and that’s it, yeah. So he was very good. He was really good. And I needed him. I really did need him at that time and he knew it, and yes, he was there. He was at the other end of the phone and he was always, if I was at the hospital, he would go to the hospital with me. Yeah, he was very good. Yeah, very good.

Sorry, one of the things he did always know when I actually needed a blood transfusion. Always. When I was on the phone he could always just tell by my voice when I needed it. And it was him that actually sometimes organised it. He would phone the hospital and get them to do the blood transfusion.

I mean my life has felt fractured the for the last eight years. Not to the point where it’s gone completely, because I’ve managed to stitch it together, but it fractures in unexpected ways.

Such as?

it’s made me less compliant. Choose my words carefully. I think when you’re in a relationship, especially one that’s been as long as ours, you often have a leader and a follower, which, you know, you choose your own path. Now I’m coming up to the leader bit and that’s changed a lot of things. And I’m sure that’s to do with having to find your inner strength to fight your battles and you become much more of a rounded person and much more of a confident person. So in a way, having leukaemia has made me more confident but it’s changed the balance of our life. To me it’s changed it for the better and I think that that’s an unexpected thing to have happened. I wouldn’t have expected that to have happened when I was told. I just expected to be ending up lying in bed having to be looked after, and it’s gone a different way.

Do you think having this illness has affected the way you feel about yourself as a woman at all, your femininity?

Oh Lord yes.

Oh, really. In what way?

I had a very happy second marriage and he died quite suddenly in what, ’95. And I still felt quite young and I didn’t in the least want to start another relationship because I didn’t see how I could, in honesty, what with being told I’d got MDS and possibly six months. How do you warm up to somebody and allow them to get fond of you and then tell them, well, he’ll probably be looking after me dying and I might not last that long and, tough, you’ve drawn the short straw. No, it was a great curtailer on that front. And I would have liked to have, you know, I would even have married a third time and been happy if I’d not had this hanging over me. But it seemed to me an inappropriate burden to put on other people.

But now that you’ve survived
I’m sorry.

en years.

Well, perhaps I made the wrong decision but it was still, I wasn’t to know.

it’s not too late.

I don’t know. Yeah, I occasionally think about it. Yes, I’m fond of my men folk.