Richmond RUNFEST Marathon 2021

Cancer used to be something I thought happened to other people and other families - never something that would affect me personally. My mum was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2016 and I still remember the call when she relayed the bad news to me. It had already progressed to stage 3 when she was diagnosed and it had spread through to her bowel. The next few months was like being in a bad dream. Mum went through several rounds of chemotherapy and then had to go through major surgery including a hysterectomy and ileostomy. You never knew which way it was going to go and I remember my dad calling me in March 2017 to tell me the bad news that she had passed away in Nobles Hospital on the Isle of Man. She was only 72 - I just couldn't believe it. Just 18 months later, dad was found at home in a critical condition and was admitted to ITU with kidney failure. He was diagnosed with multiple myeloma - a type of blood cancer. His condition was so critical that he was transferred by air ambulance from Nobles Hospital in the Isle of Man to the Royal Liverpool University Hospital where he sadly passed away two weeks later in October 2018. He was also only 72. I'm hopeful that through better detection of abnormal cancerous cells at an earlier stage, many cancers do not need to progress to the same stage that both my parents' did. We also need to continue to research to discover new drugs and treatments. There is a lot of promising work being done involving stem-cell transplants and immunotherapy that could transform cancer treatment in the future. So I am running my first ever marathon on 16 May 2021 in memory of mum and dad and raising money for Cancer Research UK so hopefully other people can be given a better chance than my parents had.