A dad of two is set to run the London Marathon, eight years after being diagnosed with an aggressive and incurable blood cancerknown as blastoid mantle cell lymphoma. Having undergone countless rounds of chemotherapy and other treatments, it was a donation from a teenager that made his “second chance at life” possible.

Now, the 53-year-old is raising moneyand awareness for the charity that made his transplant possible - Anthony Nolan. Sharing his story with Reach, the Essex local revealed he hopes to “put myself through some hard graft to help others find an equally generous anonymous donor”.

Alastair’s diagnosis seemingly came out of the blue, as the only symptom he had noticed in late 2017 was a single hard but painless lump near his groin despite being “very healthy for many years”. His wife, Louise, told him to go to the doctor who later revealed: “If you waited another six weeks…you would just not have woke up.”

He recalled being officially diagnosed the next March: “You sit there, everything stops and the word ‘incurable’ doesn't really leave you.”

A MacMillan nurse came in to help Alastair and his wife understand what they were up against: “(She) was an absolute star. I went home a lot calmer, we were talked through all the different options, and there was only one, really.”

The treatment was meant to be 12 cycles of chemotherapy, but doctors feared Alastair wouldn’t have that long so they double-dosed him for six cycles instead. However, the avid rugby fan had tickets to watch England versus Ireland that St Patrick’s Day and asked the hospital if he’d be allowed to drink.

He recalled: “They said: ‘In comparison to what you're about to be given on Monday morning, you can have as much as you like and enjoy yourself’.”

This was the start of Alastair’s new life in hospital but it wasn’t only just his life that changed shifting. His two sons and wife, Louise, also had to adjust, reducing their travel and isolating during lockdown. Not being able to help out his family as much as he used to has left Alastair with a bit of guilt wondering if “the boys’ lives would have been very different”. But the dad-of-two is an optimist at heart, something even his doctor’s have commented on.

“You just have to keep going and, and um. I think the saddest thing is, you just don't look far into the future. You just live on a bit of a hamster wheel, going around in circles.

“The ‘incurable’ word comes back. I don't think I'm going to keel over tomorrow, but am I going to see my grandchildren? You know, those are the funny things you take for granted.”

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While doing another type of chemotherapy, Alastair initially underwent an Autologous Stem Cell Transplant followed by a Allogeneic Stem Cell Transplant from an unrelated donor, all facilitated by Anthony Nolan. The process “reboots your immune system”, as he put it, giving him a “second chance at life”.

He said: “This is where I might get emotional, but you know you're lying in a hospital bed waiting to be told you've got a match. You've got no guarantee. It's just a numbers game, everyone needs to know every school, every university should put it in their starter pack, HR departments.

“You've got a direct link where you can go out to everyone and go; ‘I've just done this, and there's someone somewhere that's going back to work, going to live, because of what I've done’ and and that's pretty special.”

Alastair will be running the London Marathon for Anthony Nolan. He initially set hisfundraising goal at a lofty £5,000, but donations for the rugby coach has already tripled that.

He’ll be running with his friend and former boss, Scott, who is a genuine fan of the sport and challenged Alastair to the marathon last summer. Getting the call that he was accepted to run for Anthony Nolan turned into a surprisingly emotional moment for him.

“It's the reality of it all happening, and I was going to be able to give back. To get people to donate, you got to put yourself through a bit of, you know, a bit of hard graft. So, I've done three half marathons in the last 15 days or so," he said.

Alastair’s eldest son has now signed up to the register.To join the Anthony Nolan register, you must be between 16 and 30. Although you may be called upon to donate up until the age of 61 after you have registered.

He added: “I was lucky, they found me a match. It could have been very different.”

Alastair’s opted not to know who his donor was, fearing that if the situation didn’t turn out 100% positively, she may have felt somehow responsible, but he does know she was a 19-year-old from the Southeast.

Unfortunately, Alastair’s condition relapsed in October 2022. He’s now on a different treatment plan with a checkup scan in a matter of days but his prognosis is as unclear as ever: “I might never get it again. I might know in two weeks it has come back worse than ever.”

“My life's on pause, until someone says either, ‘yeah, it's come back and we can't do anything’ or ‘we said we've got rid of it, but no one's promising anything’.”

Anthony Nolanfacilitates around 1,200 stem cell transplants every year for patients in the UK and hundreds more for people abroad. Most donors go through the peripheral blood stem cell collection, a simple, outpatient procedure and supported throughout by the Anthony Nolan team.