And has all this sort of affected you sort of long term, emotionally and psychologically do you think?

I don’t think it has, no.

No.

I think it should have done but, you know, they say that it changes you and gives you a different look on life, but at the moment I don’t think it’s changed me at all, I think I’m still the same as I was before.

Do you think that having had cancer has changed your perspective on things in any way? So, some people say it makes them appreciate life more or see things a bit different. Do you think that’s true for you?

Not particularly as I’m aware of, I don’t think, no. I suppose having never been ill in my life previously before having the cancer, I suppose I had to accept the fact that I wasn’t totally immune to everything, but other than that, no, I think attitudes haven’t changed a great deal.

Again, I feel I’m one of those very lucky people who’s gone through life feeling pretty fit most of the time and continued to do so really.

So having had cancer hasn’t really slowed you down in many ways?

No, it hasn’t, no.

Which is good.

As I said, I feel extremely fortunate really.

What’s been the sort of long-term effects of all this on you emotionally, apart from physically?

Well it’s very difficult of course. It’s very difficult to talk about that now the years are rolling by, but I suppose if it’s done anything to me it’s sort of made me wake up every day and think well, you know, thank God for another day. And I mean what’s the good of complaining about if the weather is not right or this is not right? Just, you know, you’re just glad to be here and that’s it. It does give you a look at life that you didn’t have before.

From what you were saying before it sounded like when you came out of hospital you almost saw things differently.

In many ways, it’s hard to say whether rebirth would be a bit extreme, but it wasn’t, the light didn’t suddenly shine upon me or anything like that, but just, oddly enough, I was standing in that, waiting at the door while they bring the car to pick me up, I thought, I was just realising, you know, you miss a lot of things in life. We miss a lot of the, well, beauty, for want of the extreme things in life. You go to a park, you walk through the park, get a breath of fresh air but you don’t, sometimes you might not admire the flower beds or something else like that, but you don’t, you look at it but you don’t really see it, and you’re not going to say, oh, you know, God did quite a good job here. it’s, as I say, a rebirth, possibly a realisation of what life has in it.

Do you think that you would have felt that way if you hadn’t had cancer?

I don’t think so really. Fortunately, apart from the odd broken bone, I’ve gone through life without any hospital work and that was the first serious illness I’ve ever had, and I saw, maybe I just sort of breezed through. I breezed through life and got on with it. In many ways, possibly I’ve looked too, too inward looking at a very small area, but when you see what you’ve missed, and it’s, that is nothing in itself, a green lawn, tulips, a lily pond, daffodils, crocus and blue skies, it’s nothing splendid. There are thousands of them but really it’s you see it with different eyes. You see what really you’ve been missing.

You walk through a park, sort of thing, and you’re worried about whether you’re going to get home on time to watch a programme on the television, and there’s a far better vista around you and you want to see what’s on television. But it’s, as I say, it’s an awakening but possibly a kick up the backside, it’s might be better described.

But things were starting to happen to me that weren’t necessarily physical, because I think as an individual it changed me a great deal. Yeah?

Yeah.

Up until then, basically, I’d had very good job, I had a successful business, a career, I had money in the bank, I could change my car every year if I wanted. I had all the material things that I thought life was about, basically. And physically up until then I had always been very fit and very well. So to a certain extent I suppose what I’d done is taken life very much for granted. And because I was forced to rest, because I didn’t through certain times have the energy to do very much more than just rest, it started me to think a whole lot more deeply about, I suppose, the meaning of life. And one of the things that happened was, my mum, who goes to the local church, got her Pastor to come and have a chat with me, and he would come once a week and we’d talk about all sorts of things, and I thought he might thrust religion down my throat, but he didn’t. He was just very kind and he listened, and one afternoon every week he would come along and we would spend some time together.

And out of, I suppose out of gratitude for his visits to see me, I thought I might go along to his church, and I started to get involved in the group in the church. And I, you know, I started to view life very much differently. I mean apart from the obvious stuff like, you know, time, how much time do we have, and, you know, we are all going to die at some stage, which up until then I had very much ignored, sort of mortality and all that. And I think one of the hardest things that I had to get my head round was the fact that, you know, one of the things that is guaranteed for all of us is that we will die. And the other thing was realising that, you know, so many people are living, they’re alive, but it seemed to me they weren’t really living. And so the whole of that, for me, was turned completely upside down, and I recognised that every moment I had was of great value. And so things that, I mean even simple things, like when I used to walk the dogs, I would walk the dogs and think, Right, got three quarters of an hour to walk the dogs’, but I was finding, probably because I hadn’t got the energy to do it at such a pace anyway, I was actually finding that, you know, I would walk the dogs and see things that I’d probably not noticed for years and years and years. And I know from people that I speak to that that does happen a lot with patients who are diagnosed with cancer.

So my whole outlook on things started to gradually change, and I started to think, rather than, How much do I want to work and what do I want to earn?’, I actually started to think, Well, actually, how much do I need to earn and do I want to do that?’

My husband runs his business interests from home. We have our two dogs, we walk the dogs, we enjoy life, we’re busy, but I now take time to do what I call sniff the air. And on a beautiful day like today you stop and you think, Hey God, isn’t it good to be alive And that’s actually I think the difference is that now we take life as it comes, we enjoy life for what it is, which is something that so many people just don’t do. And if you ask me, you know, having had cancer twice, am I unlucky? I would say no, I’ve been incredibly lucky because it’s made us realise how important life is, and we enjoy it.

Oh, no, I think I should be saying that I’m trying to make every day count, and there was that feeling early on but, being human, I’ve slid back into old routines and comfortable feelings that I never thought I would. But in a way I’m grateful for that. I didn’t think that would ever happen. I’ve become as sloppy as the next person.

Do you think that having had cancer has in any way changed your views on life at all?

Well, it’s bound to. It should have. I’m just very grateful to have survived this far, and you should really make the most of the present because you just don’t know what’s around the corner, but being human we don’t do that. We let things slide and we just go back to the same old habits, but there’s a part of you that’s still aware.

How do you view your future?

How do I view my future? Well leukaemia’s been great actually because I’ve now got a new shop, which I probably wouldn’t have done if I hadn’t had leukaemia. And any fear or reservations you have in life about doing things soon go because in case you don’t have the time to do it. So I’ve travelled far more. I hadn’t travelled very much before. I was brought up that you save up for everything and you do it later. There’s no later in my life now. If I want to do something I do it. I’ve met some amazing, fascinating people from across the world, really incredible, people that are prepared to push the boundaries, think outside the box. And I now act on my gut instinct rather than the sort of, Oh well you shouldn’t do, or maybe it’s not right orrsquo;. So long as I’m seeing my son through to his twenty-first birthday it’s been a good experience, and I really, really, really mean that. Once I got past the initial months of trips to the hospital and out of the NHS system I’ve got nothing bad to say about it. And I take care of myself now and I wouldn’t have done before, I would burn myself into the ground, I would never stop. I do stop now and you enjoy life so much more when you stop, you know, whether it’s the snow outside or the wind or the rain, those little things, the leaves falling. Things I didn’t notice before, I love. So it’s actually been quite good for me.

And we’ve had holidays where twice we’ve been, we’ve had holidays in America where we would’ve probably perhaps gone once and we would’ve gone for two weeks and we’ve been for three weeks, and we do more things and just everything about it. It’s quite hard to describe it really, it’s quite hard to sort of put it in words, but it stops you worrying about the silly little things that you might have worried about before, it makes you get on and live every day for today, it makes you, if you, you know, it sounds, I don’t want it to sound as if you just go mad, but if you want something and you can afford it then you have it, you know, and you don’t think twice about it really. And I’m not saying that people, you know, you can go mad and just start spending wildly, it’s not that at all, but it does stop you worrying that much about perhaps some of the smaller decisions that you might have thought twice about before.
And both myself and my wife and my children we just live every day and we do more than we ever would have perhaps done before.

So in a way, something positive that’s come out of it.

Very. Very, very positive. Very positive in the way that I relate to people who have had any kind of great difficulty in their life. I feel a great feeling for them without being sloppy about it. I’m very much more aware of other people’s difficulties. I hope I’m helping somebody somewhere along the line but that’s how I feel about it.

But it does change your outlook on things, and many people say it and I know it sounds very corny, but when you, anybody that’s faced with a potentially life threatening illness of any description, your priorities change radically, and I haven’t yet come across anybody that doesn’t say this is one form or another. Things that seemed important before, all of a sudden your priorities change and it was no longer of any real great importance if a red bill came in. You know, it was okay it will get done but let’s not worry about this, this is not something to have a major flap about. It does, as I say, it sounds very corny but you begin to notice things, you begin to appreciate silly little things. I mean I noticed all sorts of weird and wonderful things from flowers and plants and trees and things to different people. And you do learn to appreciate, it’s not learning, you suddenly do wake up to the fact that, hey actually this isn’t too bad at all, there’s some good stuff out there. And it’s a great eye opener, it’s very, very strange. I don’t think I was ever an impatient person before, but I did become very patient. I mean I don’t, once I’d sort of got over my snappy period I did become almost too laid back for my own good I suppose in some respects, very tolerant of some things that some people would just not have tolerance with. Certain elements of things, I don’t know, it might sound like a religious experience, it’s not a religious experience, I’ve never been a religious person as such, I’ve never particularly followed any particular religion, and I mean my family were sort of Church of England and so on, I mean but I’ve never followed anything, so it’s not a religious experience, I didn’t suddenly have that sort of enlightenment. And I would like to think that I’m a spiritual person, which is I feel on a different level but, you know, it’s not that sort of thing, but it’s just different priorities and different ways of looking at things. And sometimes I see people running around like headless chickens, and thinking why, why are you doing that? You don’t have to do that. But they have to find their own way.

Perhaps something good might have come out of it, aspects of it.

Yeah, because it’s brought me closer together, closer to certain members of the family and to friends, certain friends and I suppose, actually, I found out that I’m stronger than I thought I was mentally, which is, I’ve never been a particularly self-confident, out-going person, but I do feel, to a certain extent, proud of how I’ve coped with it because I didn’t go to pieces. I just kind of took a deep breath and got on with it, and it was a frightening thing. So I suppose in a way I’m quite proud of, learnt that I’m stronger than I thought I was. Not necessarily physically, but mentally I dealt with and I dealt with it better thanI’ve a friend who lost a son to cancer and, you know, you just think, Thank God it’s m. I’d much rather have gone through it than watch somebody I loved go through it. I couldn’t have, I don’t know how I’d cope with that, so of any age. I just would find it very hard, whereas to be doing it myself was a challenge and I, you know, with a lot of help I got through it and I do feel, I’ve learnt, yeah, I’ve learnt that I was stronger mentally than I thought I was. And spiritually, I’m glad to say that I’ve, you know, I did feel closer to God, which is something that you’ve always got even if you can’t always feel that closeness, you know that you’ve had that experience, which is fantastic.

Oh, have you changed your life style at all as a result of your illness?

With two young children it’s difficult. Working full time it’s also difficult. You have restrictions that are in-built there, I do try and take more time for myself but that’s hard. I do try not to worry so much, but sometimes that’s difficult, but I think I do achieve that most of the time. I do try and fill every moment of every day, I don’t like to waste time now, I value every minute that I have. I do rest more than I used to. When I’m tired I just go to bed, I probably would have soldiered on and been up to all hours trying to do things, I don’t do that anymore. But I can’t say that I’ve got any major life changes.

I think my personality’s changed. I certainly wouldn’t have been doing something like this before. I wouldn’t have got involved with support groups before. I certainly wouldn’t have been involved with anything that involved me speaking in public, like a committee. I’m more inclined to do things that are suggested to me, previously I would have tried to weigh up all the pros and cons, but I’m a bit more inclined to give it a go now. But I can’t think of anything major.

I think from a male point of view it almost makes you a better person because I think men in many respects don’t tend to talk to other people openly, other men, other whoever, and discussion can be a little bit sort of, I don’t know, just talk about the weather or the sport or whatever, and not really talk to people, whereas after an illness that sort of thing becomes less important and proper friendships and relationships with your close family and friends become more important in your life. You’re less afraid to open up and talk about things.

I’m so grateful for having met the people that I’ve met and are involved with and the team that was at the [cancer support centre]. I’m now involved with them in a supportive kind of way, that I think it’s brought that benefit. I can’t say I wouldn’t have missed it. I would have hoped that we would have all met in some other way, but it’s been very important in shaping the rest of my life in a good way. it’s brought benefits, to be quite honest, that might not have come any other way. I don’t know about that, but I’m so grateful for how things have turned out. I’ve made some great relationships and met some life-giving people, that I can only be grateful for it.