My dad, Daryl Haines, passed away on Wednesday 9th July, whatever funds raised will be going towards his funeral service and wake. He was a father, husband, son, brother, and friend. Thank you to everyone for all of the kindness and support we have received. Any donation at any size would be greatly appreciated. Financial stress is something that should not be on my mum’s mind at this difficult time.

For those that are not familiar with my dad’s journey, I will provide a summary below, however we are fortunate enough to have access to the blog that dad kept where he documented everything regarding his cancer journey, but also extra tidbits like movie reviews and life commentary. Find this at: https://darylhaines.com/

The past 2 years have been a very long and bumpy road. It starts in Brisbane, Australia where my parents and I spent the previous 17 years living. After being in severe pain for a few days, Daryl went to A&E on 8th July 2023. After a number of tests, he was diagnosed with a very aggressive leukaemia (Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia with Philadelphia positive), which at that time the doctors advised that without immediate aggressive treatment, he would be dead within 3 weeks.

Daryl then started intensive chemotherapy for 6 rounds between July and December 2023, with the aim of killing off his entire immune system to be able to have a Stem Cell Transplant (More on that soon). Of course we all know that chemotherapy is not gentle, and that there is always a risk for a number of side-affects. But boy they should not be downplayed. Daryl got hit with anything and everything that could have happened (Side note to mention his momentary code blue when he passed out in the hospital bathroom after he was bleeding out from a colonoscopy). He went through hell and back in those 6 months, and somehow managed to make it to my graduation day.

As soon as I was finished university, and his rounds of chemotherapy had been completed, we made our journey back to the UK (the decision to move back was made before his diagnosis, but made even more sense, to be able to have the support of our entire family there).

Daryl had his Stem Cell Transplant on 9th February 2024. This then brought its own set of side-affects to deal with. But dad was incredibly strong and full of positivity. We had hopes that he would be on the recovery journey and back to work and normal lives within 6 months. We were wrong.

July 23rd 2024, we went in for a regular clinic check-in appointment, where we got the news that he had relapsed. It was devastating, and the doctor explained that it was actually quite rare to relapse so soon after transplant, and reminded us that this form of Leukaemia doesn’t have a good prognosis… but we still held on to hope as the doctors described this new approach - CAR-T Cell therapy.

Chimeric antigen receptor - T cells (CAR-T) therapy is a type of immunotherapy where the T-Cells are extracted from the patient and genetically modified in a lab to find and kill cancer cells, before infusion back into the blood. This again brought its own further set of side-affects, which Daryl… again… had strength to endure.

Again, we lived life with the aim of recovering his health and getting back on track. That was until 8th April 2025, again where routine tests showed the worst. He was in molecular relapse. Meaning that the CAR-T cells weren’t strong enough to keep the cancer at bay.

This is where we started running out of options. Daryl was on a number of drugs to try and slow down, if not stop, the growth of the cancer. But the doctors applied to get him onto a clinical trial for a new drug not normally used for his particular type of leukaemia.

When this was approved in May, it was hard to have hope as we had been down so many avenues hanging on to hope. But you just still have to hold on. For a number of weeks, life was going okay, Daryl was still dealing with a number of common side-affects (who knows from which of his many treatments). But he was going okay. We had a couple of nights in London for his 50th birthday on June 23rd (we weren’t sure he would make it to 50, so we wanted to celebrate appropriately). This unfortunately, was the beginning of the end. He first thought that he was just sore from the amount of walking done in London. But he was in agony for days after returning home.

On Monday 30th June he was in so much pain that he went back to hospital, where tests confirmed that the cancer was far too advanced and aggressive, and we had no further options. We had less than 2 weeks left with him.

As soon as they managed to get his pain under control in hospital, he was brought home to receive end-of-life care at home with family. In the end, he was very accepting, he just wanted to be comfortable at home, and say goodbye to his family and friends. He was still up and talking on Tuesday (8th July) morning, however deteriorated very quickly (and traumatically for mum and I, but I won’t write about that here), and took his last breath peacefully in his sleep at 9:52pm Wednesday 9th July 2025.

If you have read until this very end, I just want to again thank you for your support during this difficult time.