Secrets and lies

During the period when my chemotherapy seemed to be making no headway, it was difficult to plan anything but now it is working, although I get incredibly tired I have a lot more determination and drive to get through all this treatment, to enter The Bubble and hopefully survive. But now I have another goal and that is to find out more about my conception and possibly locate some half siblings.

When I first wrote about my conception, I assumed that donor insemination in the 1940s was rare and I have since been advised that this is not necessarily so. Obviously by the 1960s it was more common and perhaps more widely practised and known about but it was certainly going on in the 1940s on a regular basis. So why did I assume it was rare?

I had not really known much about it, I knew no one of a similar age who had been conceived in that way and my parents’ generation just never talked about it. I still know no one my age in England who is donor conceived! I am beginning to learn about the origins of donor conception thanks to kind people who have given me information and shown me where to look. I think the reason why it was not common in the 1940s in the UK was that Britain was at war with regular bombing in London, the law only changed in 1945 to make donor conceived children the lawful children of a marriage and frozen sperm was not used generally in the UK until 1949.

I am thrilled that a bone marrow donor has been found who could be a good match for me. But at the moment there is only one in the whole world and if anything goes wrong – he/she moves house or is not medically fit or changes his/her mind I really do need to understand more about my genetic history. In the future there are going to be more and more people of my age group who suddenly find they have odd DNA just when they need a transplant. A change in the law is needed - now