Advice from a carer: ‘We all need to be proactive’

Eric Neary knows only too well how important it is to push a loved one to go to the doctor if something is not quite right.

Neary could see his wife Debbie, then

56, was exhausted as she invested long hours in a big work project. But when she started experiencing nausea, was often too tired to get out of bed, and became breathless, all in a matter of weeks, he demanded that she go to the doctor.

‘‘She kept saying she was just tired, but she wasn’t ‘Debbie’ so I insisted,’’ Neary recalls. ‘‘She went on a Monday morning, had blood tests first thing the next day and by three o’clock the doctor had sent an ambulance to her work and she was in hospital having a blood transfusion.

‘‘Within 24 hours, they gave us the bad news that not only did she have a very aggressive AML [acute myeloid leukaemia] but she had also contracted CML [chronic myeloid leukaemia].’’

Debbie was told she had three months to live.

She went on an aggressive clinical trial – the drugs caused all her hair to fall out within 36 hours – to get her well enough for a bone marrow

transplant from her sister Lynne, and

was declared cured in November 2016.

‘‘We always knew that there was a possibility it would come back,’’ says Neary. ‘‘I think it was only about 35 per cent survivorship in those days. Debbie was diagnosed again in November 2017, and not given long to live. But Debbie being a fighter, she hung on until mid-2018.’’

Neary is very glad he insisted his wife get tested when she first experienced symptoms.

‘‘Instead of arranging a funeral in 2018, I would have probably been arranging it in 2011 – so I’m extremely grateful.’’

During Debbie’s second diagnosis, LBC asked Neary to be an inaugural member of its Consumer Advisory Board, to help advocate for patients and also offer a perspective from a carer’s point of view. He will end his six-year tenure in March 2023.

Neary says it’s crucial that people see a doctor if something’s not right.

‘‘We all need to be proactive and get medical advice. Don’t write off something as not important when it might be.’’