Mesothelioma | One Year to Live - John's Story

Grandfather and former teacher, John Slade, was told he had one year to live when he went for a check-up with his GP.

Here John shares his experience of living with mesothelioma to give hope to others.

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Transcript:

From the early 1990s I’ve known there is something wrong with me. Very slight to begin with and it was headaches and tiredness and I’d been to the GPs, I’ve had private appointments, I’ve even had a brain scan and I was finding myself in more and more discomfort. In the end my wife persuaded me again to go and see the doctor, and she listened to my chest and said, “Do not go home. Go straight to the hospital. There’s something seriously wrong here.” The consultant turned up and she told me quite blankly that I had less than a year to live. So I was in considerable shock then. It seemed rather sudden. And they diagnosed mesothelioma.
I was a history teacher at Richard Taunton College for a very short time. I got myself trained in pottery. I loved it. I joined the college in 1974 and I was teaching pottery there by the late 70s and we moved to the hut where I think there was a lot of asbestos. The insulation, the inner cladding on the walls was coming away and there was a real rot of nasty, dusty stuff. Particularly unloading the kilns we’d used very worn asbestos gloves to do this.
It’s very very difficult for my wife I believe. Imagine having to look at someone who you do have great affection for and you see them without any reason, without anything they’ve done being the cause, see them actually fading away.
In all fairness I think my wife ought to have some sort of compensation for not having me around. I think it’s quite wrong that by the 1980s when the dangers of asbestos were really well known, authorities were still permitting staff, for whom they were responsible, to work in what were basically unsafe conditions. So I brought the legal action, really, so that something can be done about the general situation. It is in order that those people who are in the same situation as me should not suffer so much.
And since then I’ve been making things out of wood.
I can’t imagine a week going by when I don’t make something. Because you’ve got the pre-existence of the wood. You’ve got all sorts of things: life in the wood, which you can bring out as you’re carving it.
And above all I make elephants.
My granddaughter asked for an elephant, so I made one and I enjoyed making it so much I thought I would become expert at making elephants.
Do everything that you can do to just accept that sometimes you might have to do a little bit less of it and you might have to do it a bit more slowly but just keep on doing it.
And take all of the enjoyment out of things that you possibly can.