“It will almost certainly save someone’s life.”
Roger McGlynn’s first exposure to blood donations was giving blood along with his wife Lisa.
“I only started donating blood when I met my now wife,” Roger tells JOE. “She donated a lot so I started.”
Little did he imagine at the time that blood donations would one day keep him alive. The first signs of trouble appeared as the couple prepared to go to a wedding in 2010.
“We were getting ready to go to a wedding in May,” recalls Roger. “The wedding was on a Saturday. I started to feel a bit tired on the Thursday before it and to get a sore throat.”
The symptoms persisted after the wedding so he decided to see a doctor and he was prescribed antibiotics. Things reached a head a week later.
“I couldn’t eat any food. I started to feel very unwell and ended up taking an ambulance into the hospital. The doctor said it might be appendicitis. They took a blood sample and I had a very high blood count. I was diagnosed with leukaemia.”
The diagnosis was a huge shock. Roger was only 41, a non-smoker and he led an active lifestyle. At the time, he was still playing hurling and training three or four times a week.
“Cancer would have been the last thing on my mind,” he says.
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