7questions that our readers would like answered, Mr Brown

IN the limited time left he has to live, Bernard Dean says his major goal is to see his grandson, Jamie, pass out and join the Royal Navy.

A proud military man whose son, Mark, spent 19 years as a Royal Marine, Mr Dean freely admits that he lives for his role as a Major with Derbyshire's cadet force, where he is an instructor.

However, 2009 has proved to be the most difficult one the 60-year-old and his family have ever endured.

In January he was diagnosed with mesothelioma, an asbestos-related cancer that has no cure.

Today, he will join six other readers of the Derby Telegraph at a special meeting with Prime Minister Gordon Brown, where he plans to confront him on how insurance companies are trying to avoid paying compensation to those with his disease.

Major Dean, of Sandiacre, said: "I didn't know that as a 15-year-old leaving school in the 1960s that 45 years later I would be fighting this.

"After all the work I did as an apprentice joiner cutting up asbestos for five years, I never thought I would have to go through huge bouts of chemotherapy.

"I did not ask for this – none of us who have this disease did.

"I think it's a travesty insurance companies are trying to get out of paying up for it."

Father-of-two Major Dean, 60, of Stevens Road, said that since being diagnosed with mesothelioma, his wife, Susan, 59, has had to give up her job as a classroom assistant to care for him.

Now he is pursuing a compensation claim in a bid to win money so she can be financially secure after he has gone.

After being diagnosed, in January this year, Major Dean's first bout of energy-sapping chemotherapy treatment took place in February and lasted until July.

He said: "When the doctor sat me down before he told me I knew it was something serious, it was just instinct.

"Chemotherapy is absolutely awful. I would have it on the Monday morning and you feel terrible until the Sunday.

"Then, just as you start to feel better, you are in again the next day for another dose.

"I felt like a pregnant woman having cravings for food I never normally bother about.

"I wanted beans on toast for breakfast and I craved Toblerone and would get it out the fridge and just devour it.

"It was just a case of getting your taste buds going again after the chemo."

Major Dean said one of the hardest things he has had to deal with this year is not being there to train the Army cadets because of his illness.

He has been an instructor across Derbyshire for 24 years and was able to go to see his current recruits after the chemotherapy reduced two of the three tumours he has in the lining of his left lung.

He said: "The kids noticed that Major Dean was not around so it was great to get to see them when I started to feel better.

"At the same time it was quite distressing because I had to tell them why I hadn't been around. There were quite a few tears. But I remain positive and set myself goals.

"For me, 2010 is all about making sure I am there to see my grandson, Jamie, pass out and join the Royal Navy."

Mesothelioma is a form of cancer brought on by exposure to asbestos fibres.

In Derby and Derbyshire there have been a growing number of cases where workers at traditional local industries, such as the railways, have developed the disease later in life.

In Major Dean's case, he became exposed when he used to cut up asbestos while working as an apprentice joiner in Nottingham.

Currently, insurers are bidding to overturn the decision of a High Court judge who ruled they should continue to pay compensation to victims of mesothelioma and their families.

Speaking after a meeting organised to highlight the issue by the Derbyshire Asbestos Support Team at The Spot, in Wilmot Street, Derby, yesterday, Chris Gaskin, 48, whose father, Garford, died of the disease said he was saddened with the attitude of the Government.

He said: "We were fortunate as my dad fought hard for his compensation, meaning my mum doesn't have to worry financially.

"Dad worked on the railways which were nationalised then and the Labour Party is supposed to look out for the working class.

"But the attitude of the current Government towards this issue is something I would have expected to see from one led by Margaret Thatcher's Conservatives.

"That would be my message to Gordon Brown."