Kate Garraway newsletter resonated with me: 'I find life very lonely without my wife Jan; I just exist. There is no future to look forward to.'

In the July of 1976, she collapsed and was later diagnosed with MS which meant she could not walk feed herself and was virtually blind.

I had a three-year-old son, my job entailed working all over the UK and Europe. I rang my boss, a German chap, and appraised him of the situation. Expecting the worst I was surprised when he simply said, ‘John please be so kind as to look after Jan – I do not want to see you in this office for at least six weeks, and no one except me will ring you, and even then that will be just to find out how Jan is.’

It was my GP, Dr Frazer Newman, who called me with results of the lumber puncture; he told me that the diagnosis was MS and suggested, in the strongest terms, not to tell her the bad news.

His reasoning was at 30-years-old, to be told that you have an incurable disease? I agreed. During this period my mother-in-law, Peggy, was superb. She helped me so much. Janette recovered during the course of the next six weeks to the point where she went shopping with her mum.

This is typical of MS, and for many years we had a fairly normal life, going on holidays and such. The next milestone was Dr Newman retired and we got given a new GP with modern ideas. At her next visit he told Jan she had MS, and you can imagine the mood – very frosty when I came home from work, for withholding the information from her. But she was happy with my explanation and forgave me.

The years went by with relapses and recoveries until around the Millenium when it became obvious that she was deteriorating, so I took early retirement from the job I loved.

We then discovered the GP practice had lost 54 years of Jan’s medical records, and that just made life very difficult when visiting consultants for help.

Over the next twenty years she became less and less mobile and despite many visits to consultants and being fitted with muscle stimulators to help her mobility, she needed walking aids to get around the house.

I curtailed my golf hobby – it became simply too time-consuming. We lost many of our friends – Jan felt uncomfortable in strange surroundings and her mobility reduced further. To add insult to injury, I was diagnosed with bowel cancer in 2018 and had surgery in January 2019. My son looked after Jan while I was hospitalised – the local authority were of no help at all.

Then came Covid and Jan only went out to go to the dentist for emergency treatment and for her jabs. In April 2022 I had the reversal surgery and returned to my carer's duties, only for her to get a mild chest infection. She was admitted into Pinderfields and was on the point of discharge when she developed sepsis – the medication was not helping and I was asked to give my permission to withdraw all medical assistance and she passed away with me holding her hand, 20 hours later in June of 2022.

I find life very lonely without her.

I just exist.

There is no future to look forward to.

John R Blundell

Dewsbury