But after the operation, once I was feeling better, and I did make a conscious effort and I lost quite a bit of weight. I lost a stone I think. I went on holiday and it was like, it was almost like my body was wanting to absorb all this food, you know, again. And I put it straight on again and I found that quite depressing because I thought, Oh, you know, I’ve put all that effort into i. But last year I made a conscious effort and I lost two stone and it stayed off all year and so I’m still two stone lighter and I’m trying to lose a little bit more weight. I think primarily it was my knees were telling me to lose a bit of weight because again the walking, and although I live in a bungalow, we’ve got stairs at work, and at the end of the week you’re thinking, Oh, don’t, not more stair. So I’m trying to lose a little bit more weight but, yeah, physically I feel quite good. And I’m not sitting at a desk all day long, which I’m happy, and, as I said to you earlier, I’m retiring in a year’s time, so hopefully I can do a bit more walking and just getting out, and gardening I enjoy so I try and keep, you know, I’m not trying to do extreme sports or extreme exercise but just gentle moving about and keep the body moving.

Have you changed your lifestyle at all as a result of your cancer?

Well I was always a very active person and I would say as a result I have probably become even more active because I get such a buzz from being active. Before I had cancer I would have played hockey, squash, as I was growing up, going to aerobics, and I always walked the dogs. After cancer I took up running, I took part in a few women’s runs, the Run for Life’ for the charity, running at that stage just three miles, increased that then to take part in the relays for the marathon in [town] running six miles. I took part in a women’s run again for charity in London, and took part this year again in the marathon, not the whole thing now, just the six miles, five or six miles. I started to walk more than before and I think for a while I became nearly addicted to exercise. I found that it made me feel so good and again I felt that it was doing me so much good physically and psychologically that I find that now a very important part of my life. I then took up golf and have a great love for the game and play that very regularly, so again on the exercise plus the social aspect of it. So I would say in life changes that’s probably the thing that I have changed the most, is my attitude to exercise.

I always ate a fairly balanced diet, my career was down that path of food, food science and technology, so I wouldn’t call myself an expert by any means but I always believed in a balanced diet and I would eat more fruit and veg now. I would never have been a great lover of chips, apart from that time I was very hungry in hospital, and fatty foods, you know, very fatty foods, I never was a great lover of those anyway. So you know, I haven’t really had to adapt my eating habits terribly.

One thing that, you know, when you’re in hospital you have to drink a lot of water, and I know that drinking water is very, very good for the body. I try to drink water, and so I probably replace some of the fizzy drinks that maybe I used to drink with water now, and keep a constant supply of chilled water in the fridge, and that helps as well.

I mean I always say my cancer was caused because I smoked, I knew I shouldn’t have done because I always had bad colds and chest infections caused by it. I’d lost my father thirty-odd years prior to that with lung cancer through smoking and yet it still didn’t make me stop. But I did manage to stop in actual fact the week before I was diagnosed, and fortunately I’ve never wanted one since, so I’ve been very lucky that way too.

Did you change your lifestyle in any way as a result of your illness in terms of diet, exercise, smoking, that sort of thing?

Well I was a smoker at the time and throughout the whole process I was told that smoking as a contributor to lymphoma would not necessarily have had anything to do with it. And in fact they advised me through the process, If you’re a smoker keep smoking, because the stress factors are high enough anyway and we don’t necessarily want you to create more stress by giving up smoking through the process. Though of course they advised that it would be in my long-term interest to give up smoking afterwards because if I’d had a type of cancer in the past that was probably some kind of indicator that I might be more liable to other types of cancer in the future and it was best for me to reduce my risk. But I was not advised to stop smoking through the process.

And did you stop smoking later?

I did stop smoking later and then I took up smoking again some time after that, and I’ve stopped now.

Well done. Was that difficult?

it’s always difficult to give up smoking I think because you can give up for a period of time and then three years without a cigarette and then you can pick one up and it’s like you did it yesterday. So I imagine it’s the same as alcohol or any other drug.

Did you just use willpower or did you use any particular method to do that?

No I just used willpower. And actually it was when I met my second wife really that I stopped. She didn’t like it, I wanted her, she didn’t like it so, so I gave up.

Have you made any changes to your lifestyle as a result of your leukaemia?

No, no, not really, though I could have used it as a, you know, excuses for, you know, stopping smoking, stopping drinking, all sorts of things, not that that affected leukaemia of course but I, you know, I could have said, Well, now I’ve been given, not a second chance but, you know, I should sort of smarten my life up. But I didn’t, no, no.

But you’ve had other illnesses as well, so
Oh yes, yes, yes.

t’s not the first time you’ve faced that kind of thing.

No, no, as I say, I’ve had melanoma, at the moment I’ve got prostate problems, I’ve got, I keep forgetting what they are, I’m on piles of sort of medicines. But so I’m well used, until I reached the twenty-first century I’d never been in hospital, nothing, and then suddenly bang, everything happened. So the last six years I’ve been in and out of hospital and so that’s why I get involved with medical things now because I’ve got some patient experience. But no, since a couple of things have happened. In fact I have actually finally done the thing that, you know, I haven’t been, you know, I’ve stopped drinking completely, I’ve stopped smoking completely, so those have been some more achievements. But I can’t say I necessarily feel much healthier for it. My bank balance is doing well. Yeah.

And you didn’t do those things specifically because of your leukaemia?

No, no, no. No I don’t think it impacted, no, not really, no, no. Sonbsp;

Has anyone ever suggested things that you could do to prevent cancer coming back?

Well, not drink too much, and diet, were the two things I was told, and once again, I’m not obsessive. I’ve always eaten healthily and I grew up on a farm in [name]. It was all organic vegetables and things, so if that should prevent it I shouldn’t have got it in the first place, is how I feel. I do drink. I have wine with my supper every day, and to be honest, I’ve no intention of stopping that because you’ve got to live your life, and another honesty is I don’t want to become eighty-odd with dementia living in a home. So I’ll just enjoy life. That’s my motto.

So in terms of sort of changing things, you haven’t really changed or felt that you want to change things?

No, I possibly take more exercise now than I used to, but that’s probably because I’ve got more time now. The children are no longer at home and so on and I am semi-retired from the business. I think I’m more aware of what I eat and of what I drink. I mean I’ve never drunk a lot. I’ve only ever had a couple of glasses of wine with food. As I say, I do think exercise is very important now. it’s important not just for the body but for mental well-being, so it’s lots of good walks.

And usually with a friend, so that’s therapeutic as well. I think everybody should have a friend to walk with.