Health

Husband’s ‘world collapsed’ as wife dies months after misdiagnosis

An RAF veteran who has raised £42K in memory of the wife he lost to a brain tumour sees her every day in their three-year-old daughter who has her “infectious positivity” and “ridiculously curly hair.”

Citing his role as a single father to Sienna, who was born in October 2018, as his toughest but most rewarding job to date, Alan Johnstone’s one deep regret is that her mother, Anneka, only knew the child they thought would be their “entire future” for 13 months.

Dietician Anneka, 33, had devoted her life to the NHS, but the health service she loved was unable to save her when she was diagnosed with glioblastoma grade IV  – a malignant brain tumour – in July 2019, which saw her deteriorate rapidly, before passing away five months later.

Alan, 37, a medical technician for the NHS, who is now bringing Sienna up as a single father in Dumfries, Scotland, said: “I’m reminded every day of Anneka. Every time I see our daughter I see her too.

“She is her spitting image. They both have stunning and ridiculously thick curly hair and the same contagious positivity.

“Sienna was our future together and it breaks my heart that Anneka never got the chance to see her grow up. She is just in nursery now and I just wish she could have been here to see this.

“I know Anneka would have been the best mum in the world. She was so caring, thoughtful and loving and Sienna has been robbed of that.”

Alan, who has just walked 214 miles coast-to-coast along Scotland’s Southern Upland Way – smashing his £3K fundraising target for The Brain Tumour Charity by raising £42K –  is now keen to promote research so that other families can be spared the same tragedy.

He said: “Hopefully, we can rid the world of this awful disease which ripped my heart apart.”

Alan and Anneka met in a nightclub in their hometown of Newton Stewart, known as the Gateway to the Galloway Hills, in 2003, when she was 17 and a lifeguard hoping to study dietetics at Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh, while he, aged 18, had just joined the RAF as a first jet technician.

It was love at first sight for the besotted pair, who began to exchange texts and met up every weekend, despite a gruelling 165-mile roundtrip between Newton Stewart and RAF Leuchars in  Fife.

Alan said:  “Anneka was intelligent, she was funny, she was larger than life.

“I was immediately attracted to her as a person. We were texting away on our old Nokias and I would spend all day waiting for her messages.

“We would have drinks, hang out, wake up rough on Sundays and then travel back. That was the first seven years of our relationship.”

Alan was often away on tour and had one four-month stint in the Falklands in 2007, but they always found time to be together when they could.

Alan playing with Sienna (Collect/PA Real Life)

He said: “I knew immediately that Anneka was the one. She was bubbly, cheery, always smiling and laughing.

“She genuinely just lit up every room. People who met her for five minutes would remember her for life.”

Despite the distance and the many days, weeks and sometimes months apart, the devoted couple persevered.

Alan added: “We met up at weekends and they just flew by.

Alan and Anneka in 2006 (Collect/PA Real Life)

Alan was a corporal (Collect/PA Real Life)

Xural.com

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