Just as John Pattison was getting his life back on track, he was given the crushing news that his daughter had the same cancer diagnosis he once had.
John, from South Shields, was diagnosed with blood cancer aged 18. Despite the odds, he survived his terminal cancer and has become what is said to be one of the UK's longest-living cancer survivors.
But his life turned upside down once again, exactly a decade after he was told he had cancer, when his little girl, Donna, was heartbreakingly given the same diagnosis aged just four. "Never in my wildest nightmares did I imagine Donna would get cancer too," says the dad, now 67, who was given the devastating blow at age 28.
"I couldn't believe the same thing was happening all over again." As a teenager, John went to work as a welder after finishing school but started to lose a huge amount of weight, weighing in at just six stone.
John, then 28, with his daughter Donna, then four, who was diagnosed with cancer (Supplied)After 10 months, he collapsed at work and was rushed to hospital. It was here he was diagnosed with lymphoma and after his parents were informed he had a 50/50 chance of survival, they chose to keep his cancer a secret to begin with.
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"I overheard a junior doctor saying I had lymphoma and realised what it meant from a story I'd read in the local paper," John said of learning about what was wrong with him. He'd read an article about soap Crossroads, where one of its stars, Richard Tonge, had been diagnosed with Hodgkin Lymphoma.
It wasn't until John required specialist care at Newcastle General Hospital that he realised the severity of his illness. He endured three gruelling years of chemotherapy and radiotherapy.
"It was pretty brutal back in the 1970s," he continued. "I'd get a few months of peace before the lumps and bumps came back. All my friends were getting married or engaged and I just wanted to be normal, but doctors said my cancer was terminal and my youth was taken away."
When they thought there was nothing else they could do, he was then given palliative chemotherapy to ease the pain, but after 10 weeks, there was astonishing news. "I was dragging my heels along the corridor to go to yet another appointment when the doctor came running out to tell me the cancer had gone and I was in remission," he said.
"He shook my hand like a true friend, but I was lost for words." Before long, John was able to get his life back on track. He got married and, as the treatment had left him unable to have children naturally, he and his wife fostered a two-year-old called Donna.
"At last, I had a family and the kind of life I'd dreamt of for years," he said. But two years later, Donna noticed a lump on her arm. When it didn't respond to antibiotics, memories made alarm bells ring in John's head and he took her straight to A&E. A biopsy revealed she too had blood cancer.
The dad has written a memoir about his ordeal (Supplied)
Donna remembers the moment she thought she was going to die as a young child (Supplied)"My heart broke because I knew exactly what she was facing," he recalled. "I'd have done anything to go through chemotherapy instead of her as she lost her hair and suffered one infection after another. We were eventually told she had a rare form of adult leukaemia and was expected to die within days.
"We didn't leave her hospital bedside and one night, as she went in and out of consciousness. I wept bitterly, convinced she'd be gone by morning." But like her dad, the little girl put up a fight.
After six weeks, doctors advised the couple to take her home to enjoy the time they had left. They tried to smile through their devastation and went on several days out to Blackpool.
At a routine appointment six months later, the consultant reportedly said Donna had gone into a spontaneous remission. "He said Donna's blood was remarkable," claimed John. "They had no explanation, just as they didn't with me."
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Donna bounced back to health and went on to become an international swimmer, representing Team GB at the 1998 World Swimming Championships in New Zealand. Donna, now 43 and who can no longer work due to a learning disability and epilepsy, said: "I remember the night I was supposed to die.
"I kept falling asleep and waking up again. Mum and dad were crying." She added: "Today, I regularly check under my arms for lumps, but I try not to dwell on cancer. You have to live the best life you can."
John is now said to be one of the UK’s longest-living cancer survivors. While he initially went back to work as a welder, following Donna's incredible recovery, he decided to make a fulfilling career change.
He returned to college and enrolled on a nursing course before becoming a senior cancer nurse in the hospital where he was initially diagnosed. "Donna has made me the proudest father in the world," he said. "I know how fortunate we both are and we appreciate every day. I've learnt there's nothing in this world as important as family."
Recently retired, John has documented what happened to him in his memoir Me and My Shadow - memoirs of a cancer survivor, available now, which won third place in the 2023 New York Book Festival Awards. It is also nominated for the London Book Festival Awards 2024 and the New England 2024 Book Festival Awards.
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