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2014 was a tough year for myself and the rest of my family. 

My dad has always been a strong, fit, and healthy man.  He enjoys spending time in the garden, playing golf and the odd game of tennis, he likes going out with his friends, and puts a lot of effort into making sure his family has as much help as one man can physically offer. 

In January 2014, my dad went into hospital with chest pains.  As most would expect, this caused considerable concern to our family, especially in the knowledge that there is a history of heart problems in the family.  Upon further investigation, the Haematology specialists concluded there were no heart issues to be concerned about, but instead, scratched the surface of something that none of us could have been prepared for.

We were told there were anomalies in my dad's white blood cell count.  At the time, we had no idea how significant this find would prove to be.

Leukaemia was always one of those horrible diseases that happens to someone else a long way from home, and we thought it highly unlikely dad would have anything like that; more likely he'd just been covering up that he had the Flu or some other minor ailment. 

Due to the abnormal cell count, coupled with dad's past medical history, age, and relative fitness, Dr John de Vos  decided to put him forward for a bone marrow test to see if there was anything more sinister.  This is when we all began to realise that maybe this wasn't just your everyday check up.  The test went ahead as planned, dad said it was nowhere near as bad as everyone makes out, and within a couple of days was off with his Golf mates on his long awaited ski trip.

From my recollection, dad went into hospital three days after his return from the ski trip, diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukaemia.  I can't speak for anyone else, but for me, no matter how hard my life was at that moment, nothing mattered other than ensuring dad was going to get better.  The emails and messages of support soon came flooding through, we kept one another well informed with what was happening, myself, wife, brothers and numerous others tried to help however possible.

As with anything this significant in life, it's always better to know what is happening and what to expect.  You soon learn doctors and specialists, no matter how good, and how hard, they try to keep you in the loop, only have so much time.  Not only this, but with an illness that we knew barely anything about, we found ourselves reading up online the medical terms, the facts, the figures, the percentages...

Dad was in hospital for three rounds of chemo, this amounted to almost 50 days isolated in a hospital room.  There were some extremely low periods, and a couple not so low times.  Although I was there through the lows, I was lucky enough to have witnessed first hand the moment that dad was told that he didn't need any more chemo. 

It turns out that through a significant amount of on-going research, a number of specialists are currently of the opinion that the risks of completing only two and a half phases of chemo, far outweigh the risks of becoming neutropenic (highly susceptible to infection) for a third time. 

Almost in the same manner that my dad was admitted into hospital (due to significant advances in technology and research over the past decades) he was released.  Thank goodness for all those charities funding and researching for those less fortunate than us.

I'm doing this to raise awareness of the disease and to ensure that the research into finding a cure continues with our support.

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