Acute myeloid leukaemia (AML)

Hi everyone. My name is Lauren and I had a stem cell transplant in 2019 to treat acute myeloid leukaemia. I'm originally from Northern Ireland and today and I'm going to share my story with Anthony Nolan's Share & Support vlog series.

My first diagnosis was in March 2018 when I was living and working in Glasgow with my fiancé Ben. At the time there had been quite a few tell tale signs that something was wrong but like many of you, cancer was nowhere on my radar. For me, I was experiencing breathlessness, bleeding gums, cuts and bruises that wouldn't heal or go away, and quite severe joint pain. I went to the GP, got a blood test, and within a couple of hours of that test I was called and sent to the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Glasgow.

I always knew that if I relapsed, I would need to get a transplant so when I did relapse, it wasn't such a shock to the system that this was something that was going to happen. Whenever I was first diagnosed we, like many of you I can imagine, did have my brother tested and he was not a match, so again, I already knew going in to the process that this was going to have to be a [unrelated] donor.

I knew it was going to have to be done in the south of Ireland, in Dublin, as Belfast didn't have the facilities at that point to cater for donor transplants. The challenge of it being in Dublin was actually that we didn't really know Dublin that well. At least in the previous year when my mum and dad had moved over to Glasgow for the five months of my treatment, I had already lived and settled in the city, and my fiancé was from Glasgow anyway, so we knew where we were, we knew what we were doing, I could tell them places to go. Dublin was a bit more of a shock to the system because we didn't know it as well, and surprisingly as well, although being from the north or Ireland and being to the south plenty of times, even dealing with the change in currency, the change in the healthcare system, just everything you take for granted here, it ended up being quite a challenge down there. The NHS did support the funding of accommodation and also travel costs which was a great help and support to my mum and dad, and the others families that I know were down in Dublin at the same time as us. I had the experience of meeting a new team whenever I started my treatment in Belfast City Hospital having had treatment the year before in Glasgow and a completely different team. So it wasn't new territory for me but obviously, as most of you will know, as you go through treatment the team that are caring for you, they get to know everything about you, whether it's your hobbies, your favourite things, or it's actual medical stuff like what you're allergic to or how you reacted to something before compared to now, signs to look out for, all those little things just help keep you at ease and take a little bit of pressure off. Sometimes it is scary putting your trust in someone new, especially one person, so having to put your trust in a whole new team, it's pretty daunting.

My biggest piece of advice? Do not, no matter what, compare yourself to anyone else. It is one of the biggest life lessons there is, and it's one that I'm not always very good at myself, but in the environment of a hospital and cancer treatment, you especially should never compare yourself to anyone else. I went down to Dublin alongside a few other fellow patients from Belfast and every one of us had a completely different journey. Unfortunately for me, mine was one of the longest and most up and down journeys compared to the others I went with but it wasn't healthy for me to compare myself to them. I spent nights worrying about the treatment of others, how well their treatment was going, even how badly their treatment was going, what if that happens to me, why isn't that happening to me, things like that. Silly things that in the grand scheme of things aren't important. I'm still here as are the lovely women I went down to Dublin with at the time, and we're all different. We're all different ages, different backgrounds, and different ways of life but we're still here, whether they got out of their transplant and back up north quicker than I did, it made no difference. Whether their journey to get there was bumpier than mine, it makes absolutely no difference.

So I like to sort of pretend that I'm like the Queen and have two birthdays in a year, and on October 30th it'll be my second birthday, and I'll be celebrating two years post-transplant, which is fab, especially considering my first time I didn't even make a year in remission so it's a good improvement on that. Things have been tough as I can imagine for all of you as well with COVID. I actually came home from Dublin in March 2020, and instantly went straight into a lockdown so it was pretty scary for a few months especially being highly vulnerable and not getting to see my family as much and friends, and I think I had a lot of plans for how my life would be post-transplant and it's been great but it's been delayed I think with the current pandemic. But health-wise I'm doing well, I don't like to be too confident in case anything goes wrong, and yes I'm married and studying a Masters at uni, and I'm back in Scotland so things are looking up and I hope that things will start looking up for all of you who are watching this and just remember: however tough it might feel at the time and it will, you're so much stronger than this and you will get through it, and there's brighter days ahead. Even despite COVID, thing will get better. Thanks.