Clive’s story: a life full of sport and a diagnosis of angioimmunoblastic T-cell lymphoma
I am a retired general medical practitioner. I’ve always had an active sporting life. This included football, cricket, mountaineering, golf, potholing and rock climbing. In the early 1970s I found a new sport that became a passion for the rest of my life – sailing – and in particular yacht racing.
On retirement I sold my house and bought a cruising catamaran, ‘Sanyassa’, and my wife and I moved on board and left the UK in 1997 on a 14-year cruise around the world, visiting over 50 countries including New Zealand where our second son lived with his Kiwi wife and our baby granddaughter. We were forced to stop when our boat was lost in a storm in Greece in 2011 and we resumed life back in the UK.
In 2016, in my 80th year, we had booked to go to New Zealand for three months but a few weeks after we arrived my health started to decline. My appetite went to zero and I lost weight. It was clear something was seriously wrong so we aborted our holiday and flew back to the UK. Immediately I contacted my GP and he arranged a scan and gastroscopy because at that time I thought the symptoms were most likely due to stomach cancer. I had the scan first which showed widespread lymph node and splenic enlargement, reported as probable lymphoma and I was referred to a haematologist.
My health was declining rapidly to the point I needed to be in a wheelchair. A chest X-ray showed widespread lymph node enlargement and some interstitial lung changes. I was booked for a biopsy, which was arranged to be done the following day.
After having the biopsy, I started taking prednisolone 80 mgm/day. Within hours I started to improve to the extent that having taken the tablets in the morning, when I was virtually chair bound, in the afternoon I was able to walk around my garden and do some tidying up. I continued to improve every day for nearly two weeks until I saw my haematologist who had the findings of the biopsy.
The results of the biopsy eventually came back as angioimmunoblastic T-cell lymphoma, a rather rare and aggressive type. The multidisciplinary team met and decided I needed CHOP chemotherapy.
During the treatment I regained all my exercise tolerance, so much so that during the later chemotherapy sessions I was able to take the three flights of stairs to the chemotherapy unit instead of using the lift. The chemotherapy did not leave me unscathed. I developed peripheral neuropathy which I have to this day with numbness in my feet and lower legs. The high dose of steroids caused me to have a gastric ulcer and several years ago I developed late onset diabetes which I feel sure was caused by me taking high dose steroids over several weeks. I have no other risk factors for the condition. In 2026, at the end of my chemotherapy, I was in remission and have remained so ever since.
I suppose being a medical practitioner gives one a different view of a cancer diagnosis. At the time, I thought that I would most likely remain in remission for two to four years then relapse, perhaps have secondary treatment then after a period, succumb. Being a pragmatic type with low levels of anxiety I was resigned to whatever happened to me, after all I would be in my mid-eighties by then which was not much less than my life expectancy anyway.
So I just got on with my life, continued to play golf, and to travel to New Zealand every year to see my three grandchildren grow up. My follow-up appointments became less frequent, are now yearly. Other medical conditions have become more significant to me.
Recently the desire to sail became too strong and in 2023 I purchased, in partnership with my brother who is also in his eighties, a 34ft cruising yacht called ‘Faustina’ and spent the subsequent seasons cruising her in the Irish Sea, Isle of Man, Northern Ireland and the Isles and mainland of the West coast of Scotland. We did our last cruise in August/September 2025. I am now in my 90th year and declining physical capabilities mean that I am finally having to give up sailing for good and sadly our boat is now up for sale.
I will shortly be celebrating my 90th birthday. In September it was the 10th anniversary of my last session of chemotherapy. My eldest granddaughter in New Zealand is getting married next March and we have booked flights to attend the wedding.
I have an idea as to why I might have done so well. Because of the way things developed in 2016 I took a high dose of prednisolone for something like six weeks prior to starting my CHOP chemotherapy. Even on prednisolone alone my general health improved substantially. I think this perhaps affected my lymphoma to make it more sensitive to other chemotherapeutic agents. I mentioned this some years ago to my haematologist, but he did not seem inclined to follow up on it, but I wonder if there is a reasonable case for using this information to design a trial to see if my excellent response could be replicated.
