Have they suggested any support organisations to you or anything?

No, no.

Do you know of any?

Somebody did give me a leaflet for CLL, which I haven’t filled in yet.

For a support group?

Well, yes they will give you information, because I don’t know of anything round here that would be a group. You know, like these sort of ones where people can go to and chat. Nothing like that.

Would you like to be a member of one of those if there was one?

If there was one locally, yes, because I don’t drive or anything. So yes,

I wouldn’t mind. As I say, if there was a local group where you all discussed it like they do in Alcoholics Anonymous, I wouldn’t mind that. But no, I mean to say there isn’t anything local. You’d have to travel wherever. I don’t know.

Yes, it was August 2006 and I’d had some swellings all round my neck and I’d had them for a couple of months, they didn’t hurt. And I thought nothing of it and I was going on holiday in the November and I thought, Well, I’d better get them checked. So I did. I went to the doctor and he made noises, hmm hmm, and I thought, Well, that’s not good. So he drew a blood test on the Friday, which he did, and the nurse said, Oh, it’ll probably be about Thursday before you hear. Well, Monday morning about 20 past 8 the doctor rang and said for me to go in and see him and he’s going to make an appointment to see a haematologist at my local hospital. And that appointment came for that in about two weeks.

Of course, when I went for my check-up the doctor nearly went spare. She said, You’re terribly anaemic, because I have to have a blood test two days before I go, and she said, That was angina pain. She said, You could have had a heart attack, which frightened me and she said, You can’t go home. You’ll have to come into hospital now and have some blood and be checked over. So that was panic.

So I had to give my daughter-in-law a list of where everything was, and I was in there for about three days where they gave me three lots of blood and started me on some pills. And I was on those for about two months but I was having to have blood transfusions, first of all it was monthly, then it got down to weekly, because it just, I wasn’t making any red blood cells. So she said, oh, she’d have to change the tablets I was on to stronger ones, but before she could do that I needed to have bone marrow taken.

But these new ones have worked much better so I’ve been cut down from once a week to once a fortnight, and my next transfusion, if it’s necessary, is in three weeks time after I’ve seen the doctor. And because she said that now I’ve started to make my own blood cells again. So she hopes that I’ll only need four months treatment, so that would take me to September, then I’d have to have another bone marrow test to check it’s all right and then hopefully I’ll come off them for a while. And that’s it.

Yes, and she came with me when I had the needle into my, bone marrow taken, that’s right, I forget sometimes, and she was holding my hand, so that was okay.

So they just gave you a local anaesthetic on the skin for that? No other sedation to make you relax and sleepy?

No.

But it was painless?

Yes, I was amazed. She had the instruments covered up and I wasn’t going to look, and you lay on your side and she said, You’ll just feel a pushing and a pulling. And that’s all you did. I was amazed, because first of all she took one bit out and then they took a little bit of bone out afterwards. And all there was on the skin was a pin prick and there was no bruise at all. Because I thought, God, I hope it’s all right because I’ve got to have another one at the end of the treatment. But yeah, it was fine.

So the pushing and the pulling wasn’t too bad at all?

No, and all you got next day was a just a slight ache. That was all. It was nothing bad. Nothing you couldn’t cope with. I was amazed. I thought I’d be scraped off the ceiling.