‘Contracting a serious illness was a blessing’

Barrie Farnsworth meets the former dentist who found a rewarding new ‘career’ helping others in retirement.

NOT many people would describe a potentially fatal illness as a ‘blessing’, but John Mills has no doubt that the onset of vasculitis 18 years ago was just that…even though the very rare disease nearly cost him his life before it was diagnosed and treated, and even though he was then given a life expectancy of five years.

The 76-year-old retired dentist said he ‘rather reluctantly’ went to the meeting of a trust set up in honour of a victim of the same disease, agreed to be a trustee – then found himself voted chair of the trust in his absence a few years later!