04 Nov 2025

“I’m lucky to be alive but the side effects, both during and post treatment are enormous”

Leukaemia treatment can be gruelling for the many months or even years that it takes. Sadly, it can also cause lasting side effects. Dan Yeates, 33, who lives in London, has just marked the fifth anniversary of his stem cell transplant. He remains in what he calls the ‘grey zone’—in remission but living with long-term effects.

“In mid-2019 life was going really well. I was 27 and a big sports nut. I played American football, and I was a serious racing cyclist. My career in software sales was going well and I’d just started a new job. I’d met my now-wife Ruchel on a work trip to the US, and we were in a long-distance relationship as she was working in Sydney, Australia.

Dan and his wife

“Then I developed a tickly cough. It was annoying but it wasn’t enough for me to go see a doctor. I went on holiday to Dubai, got a chest infection and became significantly more ill.”

Dan booked an appointment with a doctor in Dubai who gave him antibiotics. They also suggested, as he’d been poorly for six weeks, that they do a blood test.

“A week later, I flew to Sydney to spend Christmas with Ruchel’s family. Two days into the trip I got a call from the doctor saying: ‘We’ve got your blood tests back – you need to see a haematologist.’ I said, I’ll do it when I get back in January. A week later, his boss called me and said: ‘I don’t think you understand. We think you’re really quite ill.’ Obviously my first question was: ‘Well what do you think I’ve got?’. He said: ‘Based on what we’ve seen it could be anything from chronic chest disease all the way up to cancer. And we wouldn’t be doing our jobs if we didn’t urge you to see a specialist.’

“I flew back to the UK and booked an appointment privately for the day I landed. I still wasn’t thinking I was really ill. I went to the the London Clinic. They did some blood tests and the day after they called me up and said: ‘We need to see you.’ That was when I thought – this isn’t good news. I said I could come in tomorrow but if I needed treatment it was going to have to wait because I was flying to the US on Saturday for work. He said: ‘Well we’ll see about that, but you need to come in and see us.’ I went in, sat down and within the first 30 seconds was told I had cancer. He said I wouldn’t be flying to the US, and I asked why not and he went: ‘You need to go to A&E today. You need to start treatment immediately. You are very, very ill.’

“There was one particular marker in the blood that for healthy people is between 0 and 50. Mine was 10,000. He said he’d never seen it that high. That was probably the only time I had a bit of a cry.”

Dan whilst on steroids

Dan took himself to St George’s Hospital. His blood tests were repeated in order to get him into the NHS for treatment and he was given a bone marrow biopsy. He was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL) on January 8th, 2020.

Dan started chemotherapy the next day and Ruchel flew over to be with him.

“Thankfully throughout the chemo I managed pretty well. I didn’t get any infections so they were confident I’d be able to stand up to a stem cell transplant. They’d mentioned this right from the beginning as my best chance of survival. Anthony Nolan immediately found a donor on their register and the transplant was booked for my birthday on 25th June 2020 – the best birthday present ever, a second chance of life, and a whole new immune system.

Dan’s first chemotheraphy session after diagnosis

“Covid had started by this point though, so I wasn’t allowed visitors. I think it was worse for Ruchel than for me. I’d sleep or do Playstation or work most of the day. But for her not to be able to sit with me and talk to the doctors; it was very hard on her. I took two weeks of paid leave as holiday, then I didn’t take any sick leave. Work were really flexible. But at this point the side effects really kicked in. I ended up being fed through a naso-gastric tube because of all the blisters in my mouth, and I was so sick I threw the tube up. They couldn’t get it back in so for around a week I wasn’t really eating anything.”

Dan was eventually allowed to go home six weeks after his transplant. He was fully in remission. He has since focused on moving forward with his life. But there have been unexpected challenges.

“There are still chronic after-effects. I have a dry mouth and eyes, so I’m constantly using eye drops and having sips of water and I go to the Moorfields Eye Hospital every few months to be checked. I have chronic Graft vs Host Disease (GvHD) in my gut which means I don’t absorb food well so have to eat lots of calories. But the big one is chronic GvHD in my lungs. It’s quite rare, often fatal within the early years after a stem cell transplant and usually seen in people that have been heavy smokers or have had lung transplants. Again, the data on people like me having this condition is almost non-existent.

“There was a point when it became clear to me that recovery hadn’t gone as well as it could have. I expected it would go one of two ways – it would either go badly, or it would go well and I’d get better. When it became clear that actually there was a third option, that the transplant would work but I’d be severely impacted, that was the most challenging thing to deal with.

“I have benefitted enormously from having psychological support with all of this from a specially trained Anthony Nolan therapist. Without Dr Jenna’s support I would have really struggled to process the grief, anxiety and depression that I was feeling. After we worked through the process of grief for who I used to be and accepted who I now was, I have been able to recover both mentally and physically to the point that life could move on.

“Around this time Ruchel and I were talking about whether to buy a house or get married – because living in London we couldn’t afford to do both. I was thinking if I die in three years I would rather have been married. So we got engaged and had a big wedding in 2022.”

After a period of being off sick and working part time, Dan left the company and eventually started a new full-time job in February 2024. His career is once again thriving and he remains in remission, with a blood test to check every three months.

“I continue to live in the grey area – my cancer was gone, but I am not back to normal health and won’t ever be. My most recent lung function test showed a slight decline so they’ve changed my inhaler. I no longer manage to play any sport although I did coach American Football for three years but my career is taking priority now. That has been difficult but I’m working on finding the balance to have a good quality of life and getting used to what is a new normal for me.

“I’m lucky to be alive but the side effects, both during and post treatment, are enormous and make the whole process so much harder. The percentage of people with complications long term versus people who actually relapse is so much higher. Anything we can do to research new treatments that reduce this toxicity would be a massive improvement in the quality of life of patients.”