Imagine you are 27 years old, you asked your girlfriend to marry you and are busy planning your wedding in 5 months time. Imagine that you start feeling a little unwell, and discover some odd lumps. You go to your GP expecting to be told not to be so silly.

Imagine hearing that you have to have some tests, that it might be cancer. Imagine having those tests and finding out you have lymphoma. But you don't worry, because actually, you are young and healthy and the chemotherapy will work - it always does, doesn't it? But you decide to postpone your wedding, because you don't want to get married with no hair.

Imagine a few months down the line, hearing that the chemotherapy hasn't worked. That you have to have another course of chemotherapy - but it's okay because it'll all be over with before your postponed wedding. And then it isn't, and you're not getting better. And the second course of chemotherapy doesn't work.

And the doctors start looking for a bone marrow donor. And talking radiotherapy. And this starts happening at a hospital that is an hour away from your home. And a bone marrow donor is found, but you have an infection when you should be having the transplant, but the bone marrow is taken out of the donor and frozen. You get better from your infection, you have the bone marrow transplant... and it doesn't work.

And the doctors start talking about next. And you still have hope because they do. And then... and then... you get an infection you can't fight. And you go into hospital... and you don't come out. And you are no more.


My friend has lost her fiancee today. He was a good man, a really nice, gentle, happy, positive man. And she was always hopeful, never let him see her upset or worried.

I feel so sorry - and I am so upset. He's story is woven with ours as he found out about the lymphoma in the weeks after boy-o was placed. She was the first person from school to meet boy-o as she called in on her way to the hospital.

And... and.. and... I can't let myself dwell... but we know due to boy-o's birth mother he is at slightly higher than normal risk of leukaemia and lymphoma. And most of the time, we forget and don't worry. But on a day like today, I can't help but worry. Because a precious man has died today.

You will be missed Sam.