Well guys and gals I'd firstly like to introduce myself. My name is Darragh Verschoyle, I am 22 years old at the moment. I have many hobbies which I will get into with you all over time but mostly I enjoy Music, Basketball, Technology, Web Design, Motorcycles and Gaming. I am involved in the running of my family business which is Internet Café's.

The reason I am wiriting this blog is to try to give people some sort of an insight into why it is that a charity like Bikers4Life is important. On June 6th 2006 I was diagnosed with Acute Myloid Leukemia . Now I am a little self concious of writing this blog and I don't want it to appear to be some kind of attention seeking exercise or a plea for pity. I am quite well at the moment and am not looking for sympathy from anybody. My only goal of writing this blog is to try to help people to understand what it is that a cancer patient goes through and indeed what the nurses and doctors on the wards do to help.

So what got me diagnosed?

Around May 2006 I started to feel a little sick. Now don't get me wrong, at this point I thought I had a flu, which is exactly the sort of thing I would completely ignore. The only thing which really should have been an alarm bell taking into account what I know now, was that I was spitting up a lot of blood from the back of my throat and my gums were bleeding. I am the sort of person who will only go to a doctor if I am forced, so eventually my Mam made me got to the doctors to get checked out.

When I got to the doctor's surgery the doctor took a look and was quite confused about the bleeding gums and back of my throat, though she did say that it may be an ulcer as it appeared that I had a cut on my tonsil. Anyway she told me that the best thing I could do was to go to Beamont as they had an ENT clinic which I could get seen in immediately by going to A&E .

So I went directly to Beaumont Hospital and sat in A&E for a good four or five hours. By the time I got in to see the doctor there, the bleeding in my gums had stopped. They took a look and booked me in to a clinic to have my tonsil checked out two weeks later.

So two uneventful weeks later I went along to my appointment and it appeared that all was well. The doctor told me that it looked like an ulcer but it appeared to have burst. So she booked me in for another two weeks later and told me to come in to A&E if I had any problems in the meantime. At this point I was pretty confident that it was all more or less getting sorted though I must say I still felt a little off.

So I tried to just get on with things and went along to my Basketball training on Monday night in Dunboyne. I had not played in a while but was quite happy with how I had got on at training, certainly not expecting what was to happen only a few days later.

I am involved with the Irish gaming community and help to organise one of it's biggest events "Gamecon" which was being held in the Lucan Spa Hotel that weekend, which was a Bank Holiday. The event consists of 36 hours of multiplayer gaming with over 100 participants. So I went along to the event to help out and play a few games while I was at it. I arrived at the event after work on Friday at about 10pm and started to set up my laptop and get things sorted out. Like everyone else there I stayed awake all that night and into the next day. So quite early on Sunday morning and I am really starting to feel worse for wear. That said I have been awake for quite some time so I am not overly surpised.

Any way I made a decision that I was too tired to stay there so I packed up my computer and told my friend Cian who I had given a lift to that I wasn't feeling great and needed to leave. So he packed up his computer while I went down to move the car closer to the door. For a good 20 minutes I sat in the car shaking uncontrollably (this was to become something I got very used to). So I set off home after I stopped shaking and went straight to bed. I was up at 12 on Sunday for work though at this point I am really starting to feel strange. With that said I was still putting this down to the lack of sleep and a flu. So I headed off home after a short working day at 6pm and went straight to bed convinced that I would simply sleep this off and be fine in the morning with another short day to follow in the café with it being a Bank Holiday.

So the next morning I woke and went down stairs still feeling very groggy and tired. So I sat on the couch have not slept for over 18 hours, and fell straight back asleep. So my Dad (Stormbringer), told me that he was gonna work for me so that I could sleep some more. My mam decided that it was time to bring me to hospital which was just as well really!

When I got to A&E in Beaumont this time round I was seen after about an hour and taken in to have my pulse checked. The nurse seemed to think it was a little off so they did a heart monitor which revealed that my heart rate was erratic. So I was put on a trolley immediately for examination and blood tests.

It was pretty clear that I was getting worse very quickly and the bleeding in my mouth was getting a lot worse and were the random bruises all over my body. The doctors were treating me with all sorts of Anti-Biotics while they waited for the blood test results. It was when the test results came back that they realised that my Platelets were 7 when they should have been closer to 150.

This is when the transfusions began and they continued through the entire night with more and more blood units though the night. It was a surreal experience for a person who has never had this sort of medical treatment before. At this point I still had no real idea what was happening and what was actually wrong with me.

It was not until the following morning that the medical team came to my bedside with the bad news. To be honest at this stage the word Leukemia meant very little to me other than that it was cancer and bad. I had no understanding of what it actually meant. Later that day I had my first bone marrow sample taken which was a very painful experience altogether and one that although I would not like to experience again, I most likely will.

So at this point I knew the name of what I had but very little about it. And I had also had the nasty experience of having to call my parents to tell them I had cancer.

So the story shall continue, but another day. I'm all typed out for the moment.

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