'My diagnosis was an out-of-body experience - now I live 3 months at a time'

Daily Mirror

3 days ago

As a track athlete, Andrew McAslan thought he was a fit and healthy 25-year-old before receiving an earth-shattering diagnosis. Despite the odds, he's now running from Edinburgh to London
Andrew McAslan was just 25 years old when he received a life-changing diagnosis. A keen runner and super active, Andrew had been in great physical shape and had been undergoing intense training as a track athlete.
But when he started experiencing stomach cramps, doctors simply put his symptoms down to IBS, caused by stress. After pushing for more answers, he was eventually told in 2021 that he had stage four non-Hodgkin Follicular Lymphoma, a type of slow-growing blood cancer.
‌
By the time of the diagnosis, the incurable cancer had spread everywhere from his neck to his groin. Suddenly, Andrew's sporty life was swept up in immediate chemotherapy treatment, with the mental toll made all the more difficult given that so many of those his age were unable to relate to the severity of his situation, so different from the usual concerns of those navigating their twenties.
‌
Now 29, mechanical engineer Andrew has opened up about this alienating experience, which began with doctors breaking the news over the phone. Andrew, who was living in Leeds at the time, told the Mirror: "It was like an out-of-body experience, a whole body sensation where it must be too much for your mind and body to process.
"It doesn't feel real, but at the same time, it's the most sinking feeling you can imagine. You think about a hundred things at once. What is it going to mean? The first thought is, am I going to die?"
With Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma, although incurable, patients can live with the disease, with Andrew looking ahead to a "life-long struggle", until a cure is found. For Andrew's now-wife, Leah McAslan, the psychological toll was also immense.
Having only lost her mother to cancer two years previously, Leah, now 32, was still very much in the process of "muddling through" and "living a new normal" without her. Then she learned that Andrew, her "safe haven", was also seriously ill, essentially forcing her to "restart" the journey she'd already been on as someone supporting a loved one through cancer.
‌
Sports psychologist Leah first locked eyes with Andrew while they were training in the same running group, nearly 10 years ago. Looking back fondly on this first meeting, Andrew remembered: "Leia was just a very bubbly, full of energy, funny, excited sort of person. I was just very drawn to the energy and brightness, she gave off."
The instant connection was mutual, with Leah attracted to Andrew's "safe, comforting, calm presence". They found they were able to speak for hours on end, without ever getting "sick of each other", and had plenty in common, from a shared sense of humour, to running.
As explained by Leah, health and fitness weren't just "a little bit of their lifestyle"; it was what "everything else centred around". And, at the time of Andrew's diagnosis, they were "the best they'd ever been". On top of this, they were looking ahead to a shared future, having recently moved in together. Suddenly, this future felt far less certain.
‌
According to Andrew, this ordeal has made them "stronger" as a couple. However, there have been challenges. When Andrew first started to undergo treatment, the COVID-19 lockdown restrictions were still well underway, adding what Leah remarked was an "extra layer" of worry and isolation. With family support reduced to phone calls, Andrew and Leah were left to navigate their new reality by themselves.
As highlighted by Andrew, the mental health struggles of those living with incurable cancer still aren't discussed enough. Both Andrew and Leah went on to access psychological support through the Yorkshire branch of Maggie's, a cancer support charity that offers free, practical, emotional, and social support to those with cancer and their loved ones. This proved to be an invaluable lifeline.
‌
For Leah, the friends and family groups she was able to access through Maggie's gave her the space she needed to work through her own inner turmoil, aside from the day-to-day realities of caring for Andrew. She explained: "A lot of the time, everything is, and should be, focused on, how is Andrew doing, what can we do now?
"I was focused on keeping him healthy, mentally and physically, through this. But for me to be able to do that the best I could, I needed a bit of space to work through what I was going through in terms of carrying over the grief that I was already in."
With the loss of her mother still relatively raw, Leah was also able to access a grief group, which helped her work on the "underlying things that [she] was already trying to kind of deal with". Andrew was able to use Maggie's as a source of mental health support, with one-on-one counselling sessions helping him work through his complicated emotions.
‌
According to Andrew, the windows of time after getting a clear scan can prove psychologically difficult in a way that isn't often understood. While going through treatment, at least provide a focus; these in-between stages are fraught with anxiety. He shared: "You might get a month or six weeks or phase you back into work, and then it's alright, it's back to normal. You know, in terms of perspective from family and friends, it's very much like you have good news, so everything should be fine.
"And I think that's one common misconception that you hear a lot of people in similar situations talk about in terms of, sometimes the good news of a scan isn't quite the feeling that you might see on a film or something like that. It's a bit of a double-edged sword because it's great news, but you know that that's not forever. You know that it might come back, especially in my situation, you know it will come back."
‌
While adjusting to "normal life" during such periods, Andrew found that he bore "scars from the trauma of even just processing the diagnosis and treatment", as well as having to deal with side effects and changes in his body. He found it difficult to get "perspective on life", with the ordinary commitments of work and socialising with friends proving to be a minefield.
Andrew said: "I struggled a lot with feeling depressed and really anxious, and really struggling to get my head around everything that happened and how to just go on acting normal. In terms of like friends, for example, they were in their mid-twenties, so it was very much not there in the world in their lives."
‌
Eventually, Andrew found himself reaching a "few breaking points", where he was just "really struggling just to get through and put on a sort of front". According to Andrew, the support he accessed through Maggie's was "amazing", with staff making him feel "so comfortable and safe and able to express [himself] and get all these things off [his] chest from the get-go."
Andrew continued: "It brought me back to such a great place, and really helped me put myself back together with my head straight and my thoughts in line. It gave me techniques to help me tackle certain situations that I struggled with.
"Because at another point it can be really triggering going from the reality of this cancer diagnosis and all the things you have to go through into just normal life, with people complaining about the littlest things and even sat there at work or in like a social situation and you just feel so out of place because your reality is that you would love to have those problems rather than the ones that you're still trying to recover from.
‌
"Maggie's really helped me find myself again, if you like. Because I was very, very lost. And they really got me back on track, because I don't really know what I would have done without them."
Andrew credits Maggie's with giving him and Leah the "confidence" to continue living their lives amid the shadow of cancer. The couple married and welcomed a baby, and there has been plenty of joy along with the hurdles.
‌
Leah said: "It's a bit of a puzzle and a jigsaw at times, isn't it, Andrew? We never know. We live life in three-month chunks. We go to the hospital every three months, and we're told whether Andrew possibly needs treatment or not. So when we come out of that, we've got good news, right, onto the next three months, how do we live that in as rich a way as possible?
"And we have found a way to really live life well, in the boundaries that we can and the speed and the physical debilitating symptoms, but emotionally and kind of the mindset we have, we try and look at things as positively as possible".
‌
This week, Leah and Andrew are showing their appreciation for Maggie's in an incredible way. Alongside some of Andrew's friends, the couple have organised a Race the Capitals event with the aim of raising £40,000 for Maggie's, as well as men's mental health charities The Ted Senior Foundation and Two Pints Deep.
It will of course, come as no surprise to anyone who knows Leah and Andrew that this event will naturally involve plenty of running. Race the Capitals, which begins today (Wednesday, June 4), will run up until Saturday, June 7, and will see 170 runners racing from Edinburgh to Cardiff before ultimately reaching the finish line in London.