I didn’t want to admit there might be something wrong with me.
Russell hadn’t needed to see a doctor at all during his adult life, until symptoms of lymphoma became too hard to ignore. He explains why it’s important to listen to your body and seek help if something’s not right.
Back in 2023, my dad was in the Beatson Cancer centre in Glasgow being treated for leukaemia. I was up there all the time with him until he passed away, and at the start of 2024 I decided I was going to train for a 10k run in his memory.
Not being a runner, I started the Couch to 5k programme and it was all going well until around May when I began coughing. It was a really awful cough, and it didn’t just happen when I ran – sometimes I’d have a client call at work, and at the end of every sentence I spoke I’d break down coughing. It felt so bad that as well as impacting me at work it really started to bother me all the time. Just talking for short periods became very difficult. Even so, I just dismissed it, I figured I must be run down or something. You know what blokes can be like, not wanting to cause a fuss!
In the meantime, I somehow managed to do that 10k run in June, coughing all the way around. And then it was time for a family holiday in Canada. During the trip I was constantly going in and out of places with air conditioning, and the change from the hot humid air outside to the freezing air con made my cough even worse. I didn’t have any other symptoms though, or at least at the time I didn’t think I did.
It eventually got to the point where I just started crying in my kitchen. The non-stop coughing was getting so bad that it was causing extreme pain in my abdomen. I’d never needed to go to the doctor before, so that was a bit of a wake-up call.
I was persuaded by my wife that I really should go and get this checked out. So, that was a new experience for me. I went to my GP and he said there’s a whooping cough going around and that I had all the classic symptoms. He gave me a prescription for antibiotics and arranged a blood test to confirm it. He told me it’d be two or three weeks until I got the results.
It was about this time that my wife pointed out that I’d been losing weight. I also realised I never fancied a beer anymore. If we went to a restaurant or maybe even at home on the weekends, I just wasn’t bothered about having a drink. That was unusual for me, but again I didn’t think much of it. I did weigh myself and was shocked to find out I’d lost about 20lbs. I put that down to cutting out the beers!
Then the night sweats started. I’d wake up absolutely soaking around my neck and shoulders, and looking back, that’s the point where I kind of knew something wasn’t right.
It sounds ridiculous now, but at the time I didn’t want to admit it to anyone, so I kept a lid on it and told myself it was just down to hot summer nights.
When the GP finally did ring me with my results, he said my infection markers were through the roof and he told me to go straight to the local hospital for some more tests. I had an ECG and a chest X-ray and they couldn’t really see anything, but they booked me into a ward and gave me some antibiotics and arranged for me to have a CT scan a few days later. Literally about 5 minutes after I had the CT scan a doctor came to see me and told me he could see a mass on the mesentery in my abdomen, but he wasn’t sure what it was and that I’d need a biopsy to find out. I said to him, “so I don’t have whooping cough then”? He said, “no, something else is going on here”.
Over the next week or so in hospital I had a biopsy of the mass, a scan of my endocrine system, an ultrasound and loads more antibiotics and pain killers. I also started to lose my voice, I was coughing so much it ruined my vocal cords. One morning I was told that a haematologist would be coming to see me and that started alarm bells ringing.
That afternoon two consultants came to see me. They were very straightforward and to the point and told me they suspected that I had a lymphoma. They needed to do a bone marrow biopsy to help determine what kind of lymphoma it was and what stage it was at, and the whole thing kind of passed in a blur until they said they wanted me to go to the Beatson for treatment. I couldn’t believe it, it was so surreal – I’d spent so much time in the Haematology ward at the Beatson whilst my Dad was there.
I’d been such a familiar face as a visitor, with my dad, and then all of a sudden I was the patient. One nurse was like, “I can’t believe you’re here”, and I said – “well no, I can’t believe I’m here either”!
It was such a whirlwind, and all the time I was feeling worse and worse. I was really poorly. After a PET scan they said they thought I may have had a low grade lymphoma for a long time, and due to the symptoms I had, it had now transformed into a high grade lymphoma. Talking about it with the doctors was difficult because it reminded me of discussing my dad’s leukaemia. Also, having had that experience with my dad, I think that’s why I hadn’t wanted to admit that there might be something wrong with me.
In the Beatson I had a blood transfusion as I was very anaemic and at the end of August I started six rounds of R-CHOP chemotherapy treatment. In January 2025 after another PET scan I was given the good news that the treatment worked and I’m in remission. I’m now on maintenance therapy for the next two years.
I did get a few side effects during chemo, mainly nausea and vomiting, and I was surprised when my beard hair, and my eyebrows and eyelashes fell out – I thought as a bald guy I’d escape the hair loss! But the worst thing was the lack of energy and missing out on family activities. During one cycle of chemo whilst I was taking my growth factor injection I just broke down and burst into tears, it was the pain that triggered it but letting the tears flood out made me feel so much better – it was cathartic to get it out.
If I could give one piece of advice to anyone in my position, it’d be to listen to your body and don’t shrug things off.
Guys aren’t always comfortable asking for help or admitting that something is wrong. I was a proud bloke; I’d always be like “no I’m not ill I’m fine”. This experience has really opened my eyes and made me think about how things can affect me physically, mentally and emotionally.
So, if you have any symptoms, or you’re just not sure about something, take it seriously. If you speak up, you don’t have to suffer alone.
