Ryan Wilson, 29, has revealed he is in remission after a second stem cell transplant saved his life following a failed first attempt.
The Cumbria, UK, father-of-one was sent home for palliative care in January 2024 with what doctors warned could be just weeks to live. His first stem cell transplant, performed after a grueling regimen of chemotherapy and radiotherapy, had failed to take hold. Wilson had no immune system and was surviving on blood transfusions when his wife, Shannon, 29, refused to accept the prognosis and pushed for another chance.
“Honestly, it was a shock to us all,” Wilson said. “We had just welcomed our newborn baby; we didn’t know what to think.”
Wilson’s medical ordeal began in 2020 when severe night sweats forced him to change his bedding multiple times each night. He repeatedly called his doctor but said he was “fobbed off” and told to take COVID tests, which kept returning negative. By January 2021, he had deteriorated dramatically, coughing up balls of phlegm and presenting at Furness Hospital before transfer to Christie’s Hospital in Manchester. Blood tests and biopsy confirmed Hodgkin lymphoma.
“Honestly, I didn’t really take it all in,” Wilson told Talk to the Press. “I started treatment straight away; I didn’t have time to absorb what they were telling me.”
Six months of chemotherapy and a month of radiotherapy followed. On August 31, 2021, Wilson rang the remission bell. He was 23, and the timing during COVID restrictions meant he felt he had missed little of normal life. He plunged back into work and socializing, married Shannon on November 5, 2021, and the couple welcomed their daughter in July 2023.
The reprieve lasted barely two months. In September 2023, Wilson developed a severe sore throat he assumed was tonsillitis. Blood tests at Furness General Hospital showed critically low blood counts. A bone marrow biopsy at Christie’s confirmed acute myeloid leukaemia (AML), an aggressive cancer of the white blood cells that can present with symptoms including dizziness, easy bruising, fatigue, and swollen lymph nodes.
“It was a really big shock,” Wilson said. “I knew I might relapse from the lymphoma, but with a whole new cancer that was a lot worse – it was a huge shock.”
After the first transplant failed and he was discharged to die, Wilson’s persistence and Shannon’s advocacy overturned his fate. “I wasn’t feeling any worse, so we kept ringing and ringing the Christie’s and asking for a second transplant,” Wilson said. “Luckily, they gave a go-ahead. I underwent the stem cell transplant, and I have been in remission ever since.”
The second transplant took place in July 2024. A month later, Wilson was still standing. Now the couple has channeled their experience into Believe Within, a clothing brand designed for people undergoing medical treatment. The line features standard and customizable options with accessibility built in, addressing a frustration Wilson encountered firsthand when PICC line access required stripping off layers in cold hospital rooms.
“When you’re going through treatment, you don’t always feel like yourself, so I found myself buying high-end clothing because looking good and feeling good about what I was wearing gave me a little bit of confidence back,” Wilson said. “Whenever I was in hospital and mentioned it to nurses and other hospital staff, they would always tell me how good they thought the idea was and encourage me to push forward with it.”
Wilson’s journey from Hodgkin lymphoma survivor to AML patient to two-time transplant recipient now spans four years, two cancers, and a business born from hospital beds.