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Steven Robert Paterson

29th June 1971 - 6th July 1998

Steven's chemotherapy beat his leukaemia - he was in full remission - but he also had myodysplasia - a condition that alters the bone marrow meaning a relapse is much, much more likely.   The only real chance of beating it permanently was a matched unrelated donor bone marrow transplant (M.U.D. transplant) which he underwent on 6th March 1998.  At first it was going really well - he was out of isolation, then out of hospital, in record time - but three months later the graft-versus-host disease took hold in his liver.  He fought that too but in the end it was too much for his tortured body.  He suffered a brain haemorrhage and died in the early hours of Monday morning.  We were going to do a really inspirational (and no holds barred) web-site when he got out - for others undergoing cancer treatment ... so much for its happy ending.

Now over two years down the track I, his sister Kate, am finding the strength to do the page he wanted to do.  We intended it to be an information resource for others from the patient's point of view.  While I can only report what he went through, I still believe it can still be of some assistance for others.  But you know now that it did not end happily.  He died barely a week after his 27th birthday.  Only if you feel you need to, should you go there.   Grief has to be the worst feeling in the whole world.  The page also deals with my experience of grief.  I hope it may help others.

If any of Schultz' and my old web friends are wondering why Schultz' page was not updated between October 1998 and January 2000, it is because I threw myself into the page as a distraction from my grief.  As time progressed, it became a reminder of my pain at its most intense.  Finally, I can do it again.  I am not suggesting that I am not still grieving, far from it.  I just have a little more strength.

Kate

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