Neil Worrall was having the perfect summer. He was approaching his 30th birthday and was reflecting on his twenties. During this time, he had met his wife, Lisa, married her soon after, and travelled the world for nine months to celebrate their new life. They started in North America and ended their travels in Australia, toasting the New Year in at the Sydney Opera House.
“Those memories make up a huge part of our story together,” he says. Shortly after their travels, the next stage of their life began when Lisa discovered she was pregnant. Matthew was born in 2006.
“Then, we went into this spiral and we didn’t know what was happening anymore,” Worrall says.
Six days after he was born, Matthew was rushed to hospital with a blocked bowel. He was just 36 hours from dying when surgery was performed. The cause was cystic fibrosis, a genetic, degenerative condition for which there was, and still is, no cure.
“In the blink of an eye we realised we were not in control of our life,” Worrall says. “There’s a real slip from the positivity, the excitement and enthusiasm of having a child to having this ‘what the f*ck’ moment. This is not what we expected, not what we planned.”
‘You feel like you’re letting people down’
Worrall was flung into “a world of decision making”, in which both he and Lisa buried their crippling anxieties and fears for the future. Worrall took six weeks off work from JLL while Matthew spent six weeks in and out of hospital for bowel surgery.
“We just kind of shut down in order to just get through,” he says. “We were cutting stoma bags up at 3am, and the bag would fall off, and Matthew would be covered in faeces. But you just try and get through day to day.”
Worrall, at the time a junior manager, felt guilty taking the time off work. “You feel like you’re letting people down. Even though that’s not explicitly said, you feel like that’s happening.”
Matthew’s surgery was successful, and the couple decided to try for another child, this time using IVF treatment. It took them three attempts before Lisa fell pregnant. “To finally have that success where you think ‘hallelujah, we’ve finally got there’, was amazing,” Worrall says.
But during the pregnancy, a lump on Lisa’s breast led to a diagnosis of breast cancer.
Worrall vividly remembers his reaction. “I was so brainwashed from what happened with Matthew, I just thought: ‘OK, what’s the plan?’,” he says. “I didn’t even react emotionally to that news: I was emotionally numb. Lisa was in tears, while I had become a person who couldn’t respond in that way.”
Their baby girl, Eleanor, was born roughly six months later, amongst a whirlwind of hospital appointments, surgery, radiotherapy, chemotherapy, drugs and drug trials to treat Lisa’s cancer.
Their life consisted of eight to 12-week cycles, when Lisa would go through the latest treatment, trial the latest drugs – only to be told that nothing was working.
“Every time there was a knock-back, every time the drugs didn’t work, there would be a 24-hour period where we would let ourselves be upset, and then we would just get up and go again,” Worrall says.
Worrall was adamant that they would beat the cancer. “I genuinely believed that we were going to get out the other side,” he says. “So much so, that when Lisa went into hospital for the final time, we had just booked a week away in Cornwall.”
Lisa died 10 days later on 28 May, 2017, two and a half years after she was first diagnosed. She was 42 years old.
Organising the funeral was an intense time for Worrall. He felt terrified about the prospect of bringing up the children, doing everything, all alone. “When Lisa died, I started to think: ‘How the hell do I do this’,” he says. “I was going through Lisa’s clothes 36 hours after she had died working out what I would store for Eleanor, our daughter, and going through it all in a manic sense.”
‘All I was doing was bottling it up’
For the next 12 months, Worrall hid any signs that he might be struggling from colleagues and everyone around him. He returned to work soon after, trying to make up for the three or four years he felt he had lost and to make sure his career was back on track, conscious that it was all down to him now to provide for the family.
“I was trying to establish myself, and I was telling people: ‘I’m ready’,” he says. “I was just trying to send out this message that I was back in the game.
“As I had such a long period of intense emotional trauma, I guess that was just my coping mechanism: to say that everything is fine. But all I was really doing was bottling it all up, like I had done for the past 12 years.
“I knew that once I had taken that lid off that particular bottle, I was going to be a mess. I couldn’t afford to be a mess because I had to look after the kids. I didn’t want to release control as I didn’t want to overly rely on family or friends. I felt like that reflected badly on me. I felt like that meant I’m not coping.”
One evening, back at home after work, Worrall began to shut down. “I just couldn’t communicate with anyone. I didn’t respond to any message, any messages from anyone. I just thought: ‘Let me go and hide under the blanket. I can’t deal with this. I can’t face it anymore’.”
Worrall went to see a counsellor soon after that. He had suffered a mini breakdown, exhausted after everything he had been through. But weekly sessions with his counsellor made an enormous difference. He was starting to navigate life more effectively and move forward.
“More importantly than I can put into words, it allowed me to be open and honest and show emotion with the children,” he says. “Show them that it’s OK to cry, to talk about all of Lisa’s life, not just the happy times, but the difficult moments as well.”
Worrall still sees a counsellor once a week and has learned from experience that talking about mental health could not be more important. “I am responsible for 600 people in my team [as head of investor facilities management], and I talk very openly about the fact that I see a counsellor, that I’m a widower, and about my story, which I won’t hide,” he says.
JLL is also investing into creating mental health services within the company, including mental health awareness training. “It’s incredibly important we’re investing financially, in order to make sure the 600 people in my team have the support they need, because I know what it’s like. So why on earth would I not want all my team to have the support that I guess I didn’t have?”
Reflecting on the parallels with physical health, Worrall says: “You don’t go for a run once and stay physically fit for the rest of your life. It’s the same for mental health, trying to stay mentally fit is a constant process. There are days you don’t want to exercise and there are days you don’t want to talk, but in both cases you always feel better when you have.”
Worrall says that sharing his story will be worth it if even just one person seeks help if they too are struggling. “The more I valued who I was, the more I valued my mental health,” he says. “I want to show that this is my journey, this is what I’ve been through, and look at where I am now.”
If you need help with any issues raised in this article, you can get support from:
- Mind, the mental health charity 0300 123 3393 – provides advice and support to anyone experiencing a mental health problem
- The Samaritans 116 123 – confidential 24-hour support for people who are experiencing feelings of distress, despair or suicidal thoughts
- LionHeart 0800 009 2960 or 0121 289 3300 – charity for RICS professionals and real estate professionals
To send feedback, e-mail lucy.alderson@egi.co.uk or tweet @LucyAJourno or @estatesgazette
