Lesley’s Shine London Giving Page

In 2018 I took part in the Shine Night Marathon Walk with my friend Helen, little knowing that I would myself be diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukaemia, an aggressive blood cancer the following August. It took approximately a month to go from good health to these cancerous white blood cells making up 87% of my bone marrow. It’s not called Acute for nothing! It was so serious that with 5 hrs of having a routine blood test my GP phoned to tell me to go to my nearest hospital where I was immediate taken by ambulance to Addenbrookes. Chemotherapy was started within 24 hrs from having that initial blood test. Getting into remission was not easy, it took two attempts with the second necessarily much more aggressive. In total I spent nearly twelve weeks in hospital receiving chemotherapy and having my blood and immune system artificially supported with transfusions and drugs whilst my bone marrow recovered. Staying in remission is the overall challenge. Sometimes more chemotherapy will be enough and sometimes a bone marrow transplant/stem cell transplant will also be required. It’s all down to the genetics of your AML. I had three mutations with a high chance of relapse so I needed a transplant. The hope was that a new immune system would get rid of any latent leukaemia cells and be able to fend off their potential return in the future. Both my sisters Ann and Robyn and my brother Jan came forward for testing to see if their tissue type matched mine. Chances of sibling matches are full match (1/4), half match (2/4) - it’s all to do with protein markers not your blood type! Amazingly two were full matches and the other a half match. Ultimately Ann was chosen and able to have the stem cells filtered out of her blood as an outpatient procedure. I spent three more weeks in hospital over Christmas and New Year for the whole pre to post transplant process. More chemotherapy, three stem cell transfusions, many blood transfusions and then waiting for the initial stages of bone marrow engraftment. Since then it’s been a long road to full recovery - it takes roughly two years if all goes well. I will reach that milestone this December! Obviously with cancer and transplants there can never be guarantees but I’m feeling pretty healthy right now and it feels right to have set myself this new challenge. The advances in the understanding and treatment of leukaemia over the last few years have been phenomenal. We have drugs to target specific mutations, less intensive chemotherapy and radiation options providing the same or better outcomes with fewer side effects and risks but there is still a lot more to do. It’s imperative that we help keep that going. That’s why I’m doing this walk, in gratitude for what research has already achieved, how it has given me my chance at life again and the hope it brings for others in the future. I am so grateful for any donation you feel able to make to support this. Thank you! Lesley 1 in 2 people will be diagnosed with cancer in their lifetime. Every single pound you donate makes a difference to Cancer Research UK’s ground breaking work. Donate to this Giving Page today and help bring forward the day when all cancers are cured.