In February 2025, Sara was diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia (ALL). Facing a challenging journey ahead, she has chosen to document her experiences—both for herself and to support other patients and families navigating the same diagnosis.
“You have Leukaemia. I’m very sorry.” I glance at the chair to my left. My husband Duncan’s eyes looking back at me are enormous, and glassy with shock. His face looks grey, like dirty melted wax.
I open my jotter and face the Doctor. “OK. Now what?” I try to note down what he is saying, but I observe as if from a distance, that my writing isn’t keeping to the lines and it’s a pencil scrawl, not my normal neat teacher hand.
We stare at him, uncomprehendingly. How can this be? How can our lives have been so completely overturned in a moment?
As we walk back to the car in a daze, the silence is ruptured by Duncan sobbing. He hugs me, temporarily broken, and we cling to one another. Over Dunc’s shoulder, I notice a couple staring at us as they walk past and wonder abstractedly what conclusions they might be drawing about what is happening in our lives.
Time collapses and kaleidoscopes over the next week, stretching into infinity one minute and setting our pulses and hearts racing the next. We sleep badly and wander restlessly around the house through the day. Our routine of walking early in the morning helps to restore some calm and normality, but we are thrown off balance by the slightest upset. I know that my white blood cell counts are critically low from the million tests I’ve had over the past month, so I only feel safe and immune from an infection which the consultant has said could kill me, at home with Duncan for company.
So many decisions to be taken, with seemingly so little information to guide us. How do we negotiate our jobs, our friends and support network? ALL moves fast so we have to be faster.
We sit at either end of the sofa that has become our refuge and sanctuary, and Duncan reaches out and takes my hand. “How do you eat an elephant?” he asks, quoting my lovely friend Kosta. “We do it one bite at a time!”
2025 was going to be a big year for us: both of us turning 60 and about to celebrate 30 years of a very happy marriage with our 3 children and their partners in a house in Derbyshire for 10 days in August. It was all planned, booked and paid for.
But after Christmas I began to feel more tired than usual and I had an odd lower back ache for a couple of days. The main symptoms were chills quickly followed by a fever, so I’d be boiling hot one minute and my teeth would be chattering the next. I put it down to the weather and being ‘teacher tired’ (a semi-permanent state), but my appetite was waning and one afternoon I fell asleep on the sofa (something I never do), so I decided to get a blood test.
The Doctor remarked that my white cell count was low and diagnosed post viral fatigue syndrome. More blood tests followed so I was signed off work and prescribed 3 days of steroids to help with the fatigue. I began to feel better – pretty much my old self. Full of energy and with my zest for life returning, I went back to school and picked up my life, directing the school production and teaching a full timetable with no apparent ill effects.
Half term came, and we decided to go away for a couple of days and climb a mountain. A real mountain, all 1500m of it! The views were spectacular, but I found the hike unusually challenging. I was out of breath and needed to stop for breaks. Not like me. “Something’s not right,” I said to Duncan. “I’m going back for another blood test.” Within 6 hours of having the blood taken on a Sunday morning, we were sitting in front of the Consultant Haematologist at our local hospital. “We need to do a bone marrow biopsy” he told us. “Either your bone marrow is not producing blood, or your blood cells are being destroyed as soon as they are created.” He told us that it could be a blood cancer but, in his view, given how fit and well I seemed, it was more likely an auto-immune disease of some kind.
Only the biopsy would be able to tell us.
For 10 days we clung to the belief that I would be diagnosed with some kind of auto-immune disease that would be manageable, reading hope into every single positive comment the consultant made, no matter how innocuous.
“I’m not sure how I’ll cope if it’s cancer,” I told my colleagues. “Even the word is terrifying.”
4 days after the initial diagnosis of leukaemia, we were told the specifics: Type B, Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia (ALL). The consultant was factual: the treatment would last for around 2 years and would be difficult and brutal, but there was the potential of remission at the end of it. I was told that I would need chemotherapy; to expect multiple hospital stays and a lot of medical intervention.
We sat in the waiting room, preparing for another blood test and I composed a message to send to all of our friends and colleagues who were asking for news.
We were still in the hospital when the messages started pinging back to us. One was from my colleague Amelia, she told us how sorry she was to hear of my diagnosis, and then casually announced that she and her husband Dougie are patrons of a charity I’d never heard of: Cure Leukaemia. If there was anything she could do, just let her know. I was astonished and intrigued. Amelia told me how she and Dougie had come to be involved with the charity, and related success stories and personal histories to bolster me. Professor Charlie Craddock and James McLaughlin sent personal messages of support, advice and encouragement, and this is how I was introduced to my new family at the charity who has done so much, so fast, to support a stranger they don’t even know.
I don’t yet really know what is ahead of me, but I do know that I have an army of family members, friends, colleagues and professional experts at my back to carry me through what is to come and for that I am filled with gratitude and hope.
Before the bone marrow biopsy, I sent a message my family saying: “House Meeting. Saturday 2pm UK time.” “Is everything alright?” one of them asks on our family chat. We can’t lie. “We’ll tell you when we see you but it’s under control” I write.
When we meet, we tell them that what we thought was post viral fatigue syndrome appears not to be that anymore, and that the medics are exploring an auto-immune condition or cancer, but that they think the former. I am relentlessly upbeat and optimistic – my normal self – and I hope that this reassures them that it will all be OK.
Later, when the diagnosis becomes Leukaemia, I send them a message, “It’s looking like a type of blood cancer,” I wrote. I learned a lesson in that moment of the need to be direct and unequivocal.
I thought you might like to hear from one of them, so I asked one of my children to write about her reaction to my diagnosis.
Maia, aged 23: Living in Canada: Finding out my mum had Leukaemia… It was a surreal moment to say the least. I don’t think I 100% believed it for a little bit – call it delusion or hope – and I don’t know if I could say it’s even sunk in now? Especially thinking it’s MY mum who was diagnosed: my mum who is so full of life, so healthy, she’s… my mummy. It doesn’t feel real. Finding out this news was like the whole world turning on its head, and feeling the effects of that, yet acknowledging that nothing in your everyday life and routine has changed at all. I think the disjunction between those 2 things is quite difficult, because everything has changed, and yet nothing has. I’m also very far away, which creates this sense of helplessness, especially when all you want to do is help and support your parents. Above all, it’s hard to imagine how THEY are coping with it. Their lives have turned upside down, and they are having to react accordingly. We need to be strong for them, to support them, because they are going to need it. We owe them that strength because my mum is the most enthusiastic, positive, optimistic woman in the world and has never been anything different. If she’s staying strong, we owe her that resilience.
Sara is documenting her journey daily, sharing her thoughts and experiences as she navigates her diagnosis and what lies ahead. Over the next four weeks, she will continue writing, with the next diary entry set to be released on Sunday, April 27th.
Across the globe, someone is diagnosed with blood cancer every 27 seconds. In recognition of this, a new diary entry from Sara’s journey will be released on the 27th of every month, offering insight, hope, and solidarity to those facing similar battles.
Running 25 marathons in 25 days to raise funds for Cure Leukaemia. Starting on April 27th with the London Marathon and finishing on May 21st in his hometown of Hull, Sam is pushing his physical and mental limits to support life-saving research.
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