Coming to terms with a creeping killer in the blood

Blood cancers make up almost 10% of all cases of the disease in Ireland – and a new campaign aims to raise awareness of the condition, writes Helen O’Callaghan

Above from left: Maurice Cashell, living with multiple myeloma; Irish professional boxer Barry McGuigan; Jan Rynne, living with chronic  lymphocytic leukaemia (CLL) and Professor Michael O’Dwyer, Professor of Haematology at NUI Galway, at the launch of Blood Cancer  Awareness Month.

A COLLEAGUE stuck her head around the door and said ‘They’re looking for blood group B — that’s your blood group, isn’t it?’ Maurice Cashell didn’t feel much like donating blood that day in 1998, though he’d done it intermittently since the 1970s. But something made him get up and say ‘OK’.