'I Wouldn't Let My Husband Die'

TV Times charity runner Sian Ramsden on helping her husband Joel beat blood cancer and looking forward to her first London Marathon

 

- Vicki Power

Sian Ramsden will never forget the awful moment when doctors told her to bring her children into hospital so that they could say goodbye to their father.

Sian’s husband, Joel, was gravely ill with acute myeloid leukaemia, which he’d been diagnosed with only a few weeks earlier. The disease had progressed quickly and his organs were shutting down.

But Sian, of Frimley Park, Surrey, did not rush home to fetch son Oliver, now 11, and daughter Amelia, now eight. Instead, she set the doctors straight. ‘I said, “Sorry, but I refuse point blank to let cancer have him,”’ recalls Sian, 39.

‘There were alarms going off on all the machines and they were trying to ventilate Joel. I knew Joel couldn’t hear me, but I said, “Look into my eyes and don’t be frightened, but get through this. You’ve got two kids at home who need their daddy.”’