|  | David is the first to admit that crying was a major feature of dealing with his daughter Joanna’s Chronic Myeloid Leukaemia (CML). ‘We cried, we cried again - in fact crying at the drop of a hat was to become a major feature of our lives from now on,’ he says of the day he found out about her illness.
‘In the split second that the news was relayed to us, our world fell apart. Our first child, our ‘little girl’, still studying at university was now seemingly going to be taken from us,’ he says of his feelings at diagnosis. Yet David seems to have taken strength from his daughter’s positive attitude: ‘[she] wasn’t prepared to take the devastating news lying down.’
Joanna received a year of chemotherapy, and was deemed eligible for a bone marrow transplant. ‘Her sister Amanda volunteered in spite of being terrified of hospitals and squeamish of blood before the crisis hit the family,’ says David, speaking of an example of the way the family pulled together during Joanna’s disease; ‘illness like this just has an incredible way of focusing the mind.’
But David wouldn’t claim that the family had a smooth ride through Joanna’s illness. ‘Having leukaemia in the family is an enormous roller coaster of emotions and releases qualities in everyone involved that they never knew they had, good and bad!’ Joanna’s husband left her after her bone marrow transplant. ‘Probably he couldn’t cope with the extended treatment and the way it affected his own life and career plans. It could be that the realisation that he could not father a family with Joanna really began to hit home. Who knows?’ says David. As for the rest of the family, he says ‘I believe we now have a special bond which nothing can break. We are much stronger and able to cope with everyday things than perhaps we would have been. And even though we all moan at silly little things just as we did before, we know deep inside what the important things in life are and how to prioritise and cope in a crisis when others may panic.’
Highlighting the importance of providing emotional and mental support he states, ‘Never give up, no matter how bleak things get. You aren’t medics but you can supply the emotional support that your loved one needs to give the medical team and drugs and procedures the best chance.’
Offering advice to other families in a similar situation, he says ‘Without sounding too clichéd, simply support them, listen to them, help them when you can and ultimately radiate all the love you can muster for them. The love of others provides tremendous strength for them.’ |
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