In February 2023, I booked a one-way flight to Salvador in Brazil to see the carnival celebrations. Forty-four years old, physically fit after a long illness and with some savings set aside, I had decided to spend 116 days travelling around South America, a continent I had dreamed of visiting. It was the same amount of time I had previously spent in hospital.
On my first day in Salvador I was robbed at knifepoint: I swiftly realised I had a lot to learn about travelling alone. I didn’t know much about where I was and had no plan for where I was going next but I wasn’t tempted to go home, because I had already been through much worse.
In April 2015, I underwent a stem cell transplant at St Bartholomew’s hospital in London. After being diagnosed with testicular cancer and undergoing chemotherapy, my immune system wasn’t working well and I suffered several infections. The doctors told me that a stem cell transplant was my best option for getting back to decent health so that I could keep fighting the cancer that had since spread to my chest and abdomen.
Yet, after a week in hospital, I began to deteriorate rapidly. The first infusion of stem cells, which had been harvested from my own blood (an autologous transplant), did not work, and I picked up infections that left me to drift in and out of consciousness. Over the next two months, my weight dropped to 45kg (7st) and I was in constant, excruciating pain. It was now a case of urgently trying to find a stem cell donor with cells that were a close match to my own to attempt a second transplant (which can work where a patient’s own cells fail; unfortunately my mother and brother were not a match).
The cancer was no longer an issue; it was my body’s immune system that would kill me. My family began to fear the worst. At one point, I remember coming round and seeing all the ward nurses standing at my bedside crying. They thought it was the last time they would see me and I wasn’t sure I had the strength to keep fighting. The doctors told me I had two weeks to live.
Then the Anthony Nolan charity miraculously found me a match who quickly underwent the painful procedure to harvest their stem cells. By July 2015, I was slowly beginning to recover. After spending more than two months in bed, I had to learn to walk again, and in August 2015, just days before my 38th birthday, I was…
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