He lived to see a long-awaited inquiry into the contaminated blood scandal begin but sadly Steve Dymond, a haemophiliac who was infected with a deadly virus as a result of blood products given to him by the NHS, didn’t survive long enough to see it reach its conclusion.
His grieving widow Su Gorman, of campaign group Tainted Blood, will today be burying her husband – on World Haemophilia Day – and has vowed to keep on fighting in his memory, to uncover why the scandal happened and see those responsible held accountable.
Dymond died two days before Christmas at the age of 62 of organ failure. He was born with haemophilia and was infected with hepatitis C by the contaminated Factor VIII blood products given to him by the NHS to treat his condition in 1976 – something he didn’t discover until 21 years later.
Gorman, who lives in Kent, is fulfilling her wish to take her husband back home to Devon where he was born and will bury him today at a natural meadow burial ground.
Dymond was one of thousands of people, mostly haemophiliacs, who were infected with hepatitis C, HIV or both, through blood products used to treat them.
Haemophilia is an inherited blood disorder which causes recurrent bleeding due to the lack of a clotting factor, which means that after an injury it takes a long time for blood to stop flowing.
Unknown to Dymond for many years, the Factor VIII product used to treat him was imported from the United States and made from pools of blood donated by people that included risky groups such as convicts and drug addicts who were paid for their donations.
Dymond’s older brother Howard, also a haemophiliac, died at the age of 15 after a post-operative haemorrhage. He was cremated on Dymond’s 13th birthday – an experience that stayed with him throughout his life.
Gorman and Dymond met at the University of Exeter where they both studied Russian.
She told HuffPost UK: “For about a year, we saw each other in passing. Then in the second year, when we went off campus, we both used to catch the same train in the evening.
“The train was often late so we would sit at the station chatting to each other.
“We found we had a real connection as Steve was still grieving for his brother Howard and I was grieving my boyfriend who was killed in a motorbike accident when I was 17 and just about to do my A-levels.
“We were both stuck in our grieving. That’s where the strength in our relationship came from. However tough things got in life, we got through them as we both learnt very early in life what loss was.”
Gorman added: “I was Steve’s first and only girlfriend. There was no one before me as he had been so screwed up because of the death of his brother.”
Gorman says that, for both of them, studying Russian meant that haemophilia was almost glamourised as a condition, as they read tales of Rasputin and the last tsar in Imperial Russia, where it was called the “royal disease.”
Although haemophilia affected Dymond’s life and curtailed his love of sports, the couple never really thought of it as a problem.
However, their life was thrown into turmoil in 1997 when Dymond was diagnosed with hepatitis C while the couple were living in France, and then discovered he had been infected through contaminated blood.
Gorman recalled: “It was discovered when we were in the middle of an IVF programme that Steve had hepatitis C and that’s when the whole story of the contaminated blood came out.
“We were told we could not go through with the IVF cycle because of the hepatitis C and Steve was rushed to an appointment with a liver consultant.
“He told Steve that his future would be cirrhosis of the liver; cancer, a transplant and premature death.”
Gorman says Dymond didn’t end up having a liver transplant but everything else the consultant predicted came true, as his liver was damaged with cirrhosis and in 2016, he had a cancerous lump removed.
The couple never did end up having biological children of their own, but a young man called Ken came to live with them when he was 16 and homeless. He went on to become one of the youngest headteachers in London and has two sons.
Dymond taught Russian at a girls’ school in London and wrote the first Russian GCSE paper. He was also on a BBC advisory committee for a language teaching programme and a language examiner in schools. He was also fluent in French and was offered a prestigious position at the French ministry of culture which would have meant him splitting his time between Moscow and Paris.
However, his health deteriorated so he was forced to turn the post down. He returned to teaching briefly but had to take early retirement in his mid-40s due to ill health.
Gorman, a social worker, gave up work to look after her husband and together they campaigned tirelessly for Tainted Blood to fight for justice for those affected by what has been labelled “the worst disaster in the history of the NHS”.
In recent years, Dymond began to suffer from episodes of portal hypertension, a common complication of cirrhosis. It occurs due to the liver being severely scarred and blood trying to find a new way to return to the heart by using smaller vessels, which causes blisters which burst.
It was Dymond’s third distinct episode of portal hypertension which proved to be fatal, and he died in hospital on December 23.
Gorman says it was a huge shock. “I was expecting to take Steve home that evening. He was hyperventilating and it was because his organs were shutting down.
“The last thing he said to me: ‘I love you’ before going into almost a rant demanding that he wanted those who had done this to him and so many others should do penance.
“He was a campaigner right up to his last words and I promised him this would happen and I intend to keep that promise.”
The couple had been together for 44 years and Gorman admits it is difficult adapting to life without her soulmate.
Gorman will bury her husband on World Haemophilia Day, April 17.
Gorman said: “As soon as Steve died, the only thing I was certain of was that I wanted to take him home to Devon for burial.
“We found this lovely flower meadow high on a hill overlooking the River Dart and Steve’s beloved Dartmoor.
“It was the location I wanted for him. I also like the idea of putting him in a garden as Steve was a wonderful gardener and would be out there while I would get on with doing other things, so it is a fitting place for him to rest.”
A historic public inquiry into the infected blood scandal opened in September last year and public witness hearings for the inquiry will begin in London on April 30 and continue at different venues across the UK over a number of weeks.
For Gorman, getting to the truth of the scandal has become even more important as she now has to do it for her husband’s memory.
She said: “I want to know why this scandal happened and I want to see the people responsible punished for their actions.
“I want them to admit what they did and explain why they did it and why they caused so much suffering for so many people.”