'Steve had so much more to give'

On December 23, holding the hand of his wife of more than 40 years, Steve Dymond became the latest victim of the blood contamination scandal. The former teacher, 62, who lived in Broadstairs, had been, for the final years of his life, an outspoken campaig

In the end Steve Dymond’s life was defined by his haemophilia.

It shouldn’t have been that way. He was so much more and had so much more to give.

And, as a mild haemophiliac, he should have been able to lead an active healthy life.

He was the younger of two brothers of parents who believed, like many, that haemophilia was a family secret.

He was diagnosed aged 12 and just six months before his older brother died, undiagnosed, from a post-operative haemorrhage. Steve never fully shook off that childhood trauma.

He never stopped believing he would one day follow his brother and bleed to death in a hospital bed.

But not before he had created a life full of achievements and wonderful memories which touched so many people.

It is difficult to sum up Steve’s life because there was so much to him.

After graduating, he became a popular and much respected teacher at Catford County School in London with a career expanding into the wider aspects of education.

He believed passionately in equality and education. Characteristics he was later to bring to his work with the contaminated blood campaign.

Outside of work he loved spending time with friends. He was passionate about cinema, literature and adored his time in London visiting galleries, museums and theatre. He loved music from Mozart to Led Zeppelin.

He loved sport, becoming a Chelsea supporter when he moved to London. He was a gifted linguist, spoke three languages fluently and enough to get by in others. But a man of contrasts he was never happier than spending hours in the silence and solitude of his amazing gardens.

He was first infected with hepatitis C, we now believe, while a student of Russian at the University of Exeter in the hot summer of 1976. The summer we fell in love.

It would be 21 years before we discovered all the plans and hopes and dreams we shared in those sunny days were already badly compromised.

His next scare was when it was revealed he had been exposed to a contaminated blood product which contained HIV. It led to 18 months of trauma but, mercifully, he escaped.

Shortly after that he accepted an invitation to move to France for professional reasons -

an offer we might not have embraced so wholeheartedly had we known he had hepatitis C.

Steve once described living with the condition as akin to going through life with your shoe laces tied together or having the permanent sensation that everything he aimed for was just out of his reach.

It was in France in 1997 we discovered the hep C during a fertility treatment which was immediately terminated.

Although he still managed to achieve so much, an MA in business studies, a PHD in cultural and artistic management, both in his adopted French language, his health never permitted him to rebuild a sustainable career.

The vicious anti-viral treatment, which failed to eradicate the hep C in 2003, did so much damage that from the age of 46 he never worked again.

We returned to the UK in 2009.

But connecting with the Tainted Blood campaign ended our solitary, nomadic life and gave us a new focus and at last the real sense of family missing from our lives.

In 2015, the year the new drug treatments finally cleared the hep C from his body, too late for the ravages to be repaired, he started working to raise the public profile of the campaign.

His work as a campaigner and spokesperson on behalf of the many haemophilia families, so many trapped in the silence he knew from childhood, became his ultimate career.

It wasn’t supposed to be like that. We still had plans to retire once the battle for truth and justice was successfully concluded.

He died in hospital, like his brother, leaving unfinished plans.

His last words were to insist that those responsible for this harm to so many should be made to do penance. I promised him it would happen and that is one promise I intend to keep.

It is not the legacy we imagined in that long ago hot summer. There are no children, no lovingly created shared home, no financial security and no life insurance.

But none of that has anything to do with me not knowing what I’m going to do without him.

‘It would be 21 years before we discovered all the plans and hopes and dreams we shared in those sunny days were already badly compromised’