Interview 01

Age at interview: 60

Age at diagnosis: 35

Brief Outline: Hodgkin's Disease diagnosed in 1980 following vomiting, cough and swollen lymph nodes in the neck. Surgery to remove swollen lymph nodes, followed by chemotherapy. In remission.

Background: Retired fork lift driver, divorced with one adult daughter. Ethnic background: White British.

More about me...

In 1980 he experienced daily vomiting and a cough that wouldn't go away. After being treated for a viral infection he was referred to hospital for investigations because of swollen lymph glands in his neck. He had surgery to remove the lymph glands and to treat an abscess in his throat. He was diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease and put on a course of intravenous chemotherapy. Despite being told that the chemotherapy might make him infertile he later fathered another child which, unfortunately, did not live long. He has been in remission from his lymphoma for twentyfive years. He has unrelated health problems including diabetes.
 

His tongue furred up after chemotherapy and food and drink didn't taste right.

So what was the chemotherapy like, did it make you feel terrible?

Yeah you couldn't taste anything, you know, your tongue would be furred up and the taste of food or anything like that, it was horrible, well I say it was horrible compared with the natural taste, yeah. I will say I did drink at that time and if I went and had a glass of lager, it would taste, it wouldn't taste right anyway but you drunk it, you know, I'd start going red from the neck upwards. That's only when I had drunk lager then. But yeah it wasn't the best but that was twenty-five years ago now. I mean I know it's changed, it doesn't, I don't think it does the things that it did then but it was the early part of them learning that they could treat you. They hadn't had a cure not long before that.

Imagined himself travelling through his blood vessels and killing the bad cells.

But there was a time when I wasn't in hospital where I think the NHS has told people to do this, where you just lay there and I would put my hand across to my wrist, shut my eyes and imagine that I was travelling through my own body, my blood, the blood cells and arteries. And although I didn't know what was wrong with me at that time I was referring to red blood cells and the green cells were bad. Now within my mind I was destroying those cells and I done this twice, three times and within six months they couldn't find a trace of it although I had to go the full length of chemo.