What if…

“What If…”

Many people have sent me messages this morning, wishing me luck, sending me their thoughts, asking how I’m feeling about the much anticipated publication of the Infected Blood Inquiry report. I’m grateful. Here’s where I’m at with it all right now and I am hopeful that you’ll take the positives in the message I have put together.

It’s been almost five years since I gave my witness statement to the report, and that feels like a lifetime ago.

It’s been 2,042 days since I found out I had contracted Hepatitis C during a heart operation I had at the age of 3. For 11,858 days, I lived with a disease I had no knowledge of.

The past few years have presented a wide range of emotion and taught me a great deal about life and what it means to be alive.

In times gone by, when I’ve been given bad news or come up against a real problem, I’m a “right let’s work out how to fix this right now” kind of guy – a reaction of mind, rather than of feeling. Even when my Dad died suddenly in 2012, this was my instinct and to a large extent, I made it work for me. I put off the grief in favour of dealing with the practicalities of his death – never ideal by the way.

When I received my diagnosis, initially my modus operandi gave me this same opportunity. I had a disease. It had damaged my body. I needed to do whatever it took to get well. That’s by and large been taken care of fairly quickly. Inevitably, I’ve had years taken off my life, and whilst that’s far from ideal, I consider myself lucky from a physical standpoint. Had I known about my illness sooner, the wait for treatment would have been longer and the medicine required, more severe in its side effects. Considering the time I had Hep C for, the damage to my body wasn’t as bad as it could have been. Someone is probably to blame for this, but it can’t be helped now, so let’s crack on.

Whilst my youth was unknowingly stifled, I enjoyed it without any stigma that I and my family would have had to endure at the time. The world was very different in the 1980s and those who did physically suffer worse by contracting HIV, as well as those who had been given what was known as “non-A/non’B Hepatitis” at the time, all had to face a world that looked down on them as a result. And I have a wonderfully supportive family and friends. Two businesses, great colleagues. I get to have fun. And I’m alive. Lucky, right? Let’s just keep this show on the road.

Well yes. Every day I count myself lucky.

But also NO. Big ‘Nos’ that have stopped me in my tracks.

No, because it should never have happened.

No, because someone somewhere could have prevented it from happening or at the very least, could have owned up to it far, far sooner.

No… because I’ve lived a life, hopefully around half of which, should, would and could have been different. This cast a huge, existential shadow on me, one that my go-to method of facing adversity was simply inadequate to meet.

“If this hadn’t happened to me, what would I have been?”

“Where would I have been?”

“What would I have become?”

“I would not have met my wife. Therefore, I would not have had my children. They would not exist, if only this hadn’t have happened to me.”

“Am I to be glad this happened to me?”

“Has my entire life been a lie or, at least based on someone else’s lie?”

One of life’s lessons we are all taught as children, and repeatedly told as we grow, is not to dwell on those should have, would have, could have moments. Life’s too short for regrets.

But shit happens to us all. I used to brush it off and keep moving forward in my own, probably naive way. I have needed major help on this one though.

I’ve had to go places in psychotherapy sessions that I never envisaged, but professional support has been one of the best things I have ever done (get help, even if you think you’re good!). I have learned to face these unfathomable questions with an overarching sense of perspective that now governs a new way of being.

Day in day out, I try to live a life of reflection.

Regret comes to us all at some point, whether of our own doing or not. If you’re like me – a “million miles per hour kind of person”, do not simply plough on to try move on from life’s lows, but choose to face them. Properly. Take the time to build the skills needed for true reflection and I promise that you’ll learn a great deal about yourself in the process and your life will be more authentic and happier for it.

So whilst I will read the Inquiry Report diligently – so much work has gone in to it and I’m grateful for the redress I hope it brings to me and tens of thousand of others, I am not anticipating it will answer any of the existential questions I have had to face. Only the rest of my life and how I choose to live it can do that. And so, rather than be at Westminster today, I am lucky enough to be at my children’s sports day. Just so long as it does, life goes on.