Not Dead Yet!

Blood cancer has had an incredible impact upon Stephen and his family. His father Geoff was diagnosed with MDS / Myelofibrosis in 2001 at the age of 56 and sadly passed away on Christmas Day, 2011. During 2015 Stephen started to feel unwell and this led to him being diagnosed with another rare blood cancer (MDS/MPN RARS-T), in February 2016. Unfortunately his sister would also be diagnosed with this same cancer, later in 2016.

For the first few years post diagnosis, Stephen was not receiving any treatment such as chemo, but was on “watch & wait”, all the time knowing that he may eventually need a Bone Marrow Transplant (BMT). During this time he started to struggle with severe fatigue and eventually began having blood transfusions. Sadly he retired from teaching in 2018, as the fatigue had become a daily struggle, coupled with now weekly blood transfusions and the necessity to avoid infections.

Fast forward to August 2019 and the decision was made by his Haematology Team that he now needed a BMT. Not a decision that is made lightly, as a Bone Marrow Transplant is a very complex and dangerous procedure which requires the patient to be in hospital for many weeks and a long period of convalescence.

A bone marrow transplant, also known as a stem cell transplant, is a medical procedure that replaces unhealthy blood-forming cells in your bone marrow with healthy stem cells. This procedure is used to treat certain blood cancers. First, high-dose chemotherapy and/or radiation therapy is given to destroy the diseased cells, then healthy stem cells, either from a donor or the patient's own body, are infused into the bloodstream. These healthy cells travel to the bone marrow, where over time they begin producing new, healthy blood cells. In Stephen’s case he required donor cells, which came from overseas.

Not Dead Yet! chronicles Stephen’s cancer treatment, both pre and post transplant. He thought he’d finished writing it late last year, as his 5 year transplant anniversary was approaching, however that was not to be. In January 2025 he was informed that his transplant was now failing and he was in relapse, with the real possibility of needing a second BMT in the next few years. But in true Stephen fashion he just said, “Well there’s a few more chapters for the book!”

Not Dead Yet! has not been published at this stage, but the draft has been shared with a select few. Watch this space!

“The decision to write this book came about after reading Christopher Hitchens’ book “Mortality” which documented his struggle with cancer. In the book, Hitchens talked about not being able to “…summon the memory of how I felt during those lacerating days and nights.” (pg. 68) That same feeling also worries me.

As I was approaching the three year anniversary of my transplant, I like Hitchens, struggled to remember what my family and I had been through. I still do for that matter.

The title of this book is a reference to a scene from Monty Python’s movie The Holy Grail and was something my father would say whenever we would ask how he was feeling, while he was dealing with blood cancer. Later my sister and I also took it up as our catch phrase. It kind of speaks to the sense of humour one often needs to get through some of those tougher moments. Mind you, it drove Patti nuts at times.”

Stephen receiving his Bone Marrow Transplant on 29th November 2019.