Margrete is Frieda´s best friend. Frieda is Nienke´s and Suzanne's mother. Margrete was 29 years old when Acute Myelobastische Leukaemia (AML) was identified in her body. She is treated for one year against this disease.

"I was very tired, and at a moment I had stomach-ache and a strange flu. Doctors did some research and, at the end they found out that I had AML. My family and friends were shocked. It has taken a year until I was in remission. This means that all the un-managed cells were gone. I’m treated with a combination of three chemotherapies and bone marrow transplantation with chemotherapy. I got the bone marrow from my sister. When I told her that I could cure with the help of her bone marrow she directly decided to give it to me. She has had pain in her back after the operation. The marrow bone is taken out of her back. But now, after 16 years the pain is already gone for a long time. "

"I’ve had a lot of support from my friends and family during the year when I was ill. I could talk a lot with some of them. But I couldn’t talk about everything with everybody. With some I could talk about the dead, and with others I couldn’t. Everyone did something different. Someone passed by the hospital with a pizza because I preferred a pizza at that moment for example. Frieda took care of all the visitors. All my friends did something different. It would have been a hard time for me if my family and friends weren’t there for me. It’s very important to talk. "

"I smoked my first cigarette when I was 13 years old. At that time it was very cool to smoke. Besides that the consequences weren’t much known. They told us that it wasn’t healthy and that if you became older, you could get lung cancer. I still smoked when I got leukaemia. The doctors advised me to keep smoking. This was because quit smoking would cause a lot of stress and that wasn’t practical in that period. Three years after I was cured I quit smoking. I carried on for three years. Now I have quit again for two and a halve year. This is not especially for my healthcare, but for myself. "

"I’m being checked every year. This isn’t because the doctors are afraid that it comes back. I need to do this, because I’ve suffered from a heavy kind of leukaemia. Sixteen years ago it wasn’t very common that people survived that. This is the reason why I need to be checked once a year. "

"I’ve no complaints any more. It’s a fact that I can’t get children any more. Chemotherapy stops the cell-division in your body. So the ova are broken down also. At your birth, you get an amount of ova, and there are no new ova produced afterwards. So after chemotherapy I became unfertile and in the menopause. Nowadays girls can take their ova out of their body before the chemotherapy. These are being freezed and eventually put back with the help of IVF. "

"It took a long time for me to deal with the whole situation. I think I’ve been working on it for about ten years. This doesn’t mean that I haven’t been smiling in these ten years, but I had to think a lot about it. Normally women get children on the age where I got cancer. My relation was broken up after a couple of years, also because of the disease, and I’ve had a lot of heartache due to this. I had to give everything a place and I had to think about it a lot.
I haven’t had troubles with it since five years ago. I have finished with it."

Margrete’s tip for others:
"People have to realise that everyone can mean something different for someone. For example, sometimes it’s better to read out a story for someone who can’t read, instead of having deep conversations all the time. The chemotherapy caused a painful throat. My mother brought soft-slices pieces of fruit with her to the hospital. Very practical but it was fantastic for me. Moreover it is very important to call or sent a card regularly. The point is that you have to be there during the long time that someone is treated."

"The last thing I would like to add is that I absolutely believe that even if you have cancer, you live. No matter how long it will take, you can do something with your life. Even if you have your limits due to for example the chemotherapy, you can adapt yourself. "

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