Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia – a wife’s perspective

[HAIRBEAR_UK]

For Carers Week, Lisa Goodall shares her experience of caring for her husband following his diagnosis of ALL. In this first blog, she recounts the shock and uncertainty immediately following diagnosis.

Diagnosis

The 28th December 2016 is a day which will be forever etched in my mind; not because it was our beautiful daughter’s 3rd birthday, but because it was the day my husband was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL).

Martin had been complaining of ‘not feeling right’ for several months prior to this with pains in his chest, pins and needles in his arm, feeling really hot and sweating, random aches and pains in his back and shoulders, tiredness and headaches. These symptoms didn’t all occur at once but kept changing, which made it all very confusing. He kept going back to the doctors, but they thought he had a virus or had pulled a muscle in his back from all of the labouring he had been doing whilst landscaping our garden. In the end, his continued low white blood count rang alarms, which led to a blood sample being sent to the local haematology department and to the diagnosis of leukaemia, a form of blood cancer.

My emotions were complex during those first few days. First came the incomprehension, quickly followed by feelings of powerlessness and sadness that our lives had inadvertently changed and that we were now at the mercy of our wonderful healthcare service.

Read full story here leukaemiacare.org.uk/suppor...

[2003UK]

I believe that highlighting Carer's week is so important, thanks Lisa. I think that for every one person given a diagnosis it usually effects several people from family, friends, carers, acquaintances, colleagues etc. The carers role can be the most isolated, hardest role, perhaps physically and emotionally, in the world, but so importantly Leukaemia Care is there for the carers as well.