Just over two months ago my mum died due to metastatic breast cancer which changed my life entirely overnight. I have challenged myself to run 100km in one go, in my mum's memory, and to hopefully help other families dealing with cancer. This is my story.

Those who know me know that I’m a pretty private person, but I’ve decided to share my story so that anyone who might be interested can understand why I set myself on this challenge and what this means to me personally.

My journey with my mum began when my parents divorced when I was about 1.5/2yrs old at that point my mum was now a single mum.
She dropped her whole life to take care of me.. her business became more stagnant but she still gave me the best of everything (food, holidays, clothes, private education which she paid for herself from her earnings from the business she built from scratch), she stopped dating and never ended up remarrying, she quit drinking and smoking completely and sacrificed much more for me. I owe her more than I could ever repay.

And that’s why when in May/June 2016 she was diagnosed with breast cancer it seriously affected me mentally in all aspects of my life. The doctors gave her 1.5 years to live even with the best medical help. I was only 15, at the time so as you can guess this seriously affected my mental health. 

When my mum and I walked out of that hospital and when we got in the car she burst into tears and just said “fuck that, 1.5years? That’s not good enough”. My mum was a very hardheaded and hardworking person so she started researching alternative cancer cures (she must’ve read through 100+ books and online medical articles). She found something called ‘Gurson Therapy’ which is a controversial alternative medical practice. In the end, my mum got over 4.5 years (an extra 3 years) with Gerson therapy, it was the right route for my mum.

My mum was perfectly fine health-wise until the summer of 2018, which was just before I was going to uni. She would upon occasion have cold sweats and shivers, be overly tired, lose her appetite. I often travelled home from uni to spend time with her/help her with things.

My mum’s condition continued as the same until May 14th 2020 where she was taken into the hospital for the first time amongst many in the following months.. she lost the ability to walk properly and had to be put on morphine for the pain. She was diagnosed with liver and spine cancer as well and the spine cancer had fractured her T12 vertebrae causing her walking ability to degrade and her ongoing severe back pain. Things were made more difficult because of covid restrictions (I could rarely visit her in hospital) but we managed to make it work.

When I came home from uni in December 2020, my mum's health started its final decline. Despite it not being a normal Christmas and it was just the two of us chilling at home watching movies, we had a great last Christmas & New Years together.

In January my mum's health started degrading fast. My mum started losing cognitive function, getting delirious, hallucinating, stopped eating, often vomiting, bedpans and etc...point is, she wasn’t in a place to run everything so I had to completely take over organising the nurses/carers/doctors and start making the medical decisions on her behalf, look after the house, keep up my army training, uni, etc...

My mum inspired laughter and smiles out of everyone she interacted with and was cracking jokes until the very end, many people have messaged me since her passing telling me how she had an ability to care about and make everyone around her feel special. Despite the fact that my mum held onto her belief that she would get better until the very end, she passed away on the 6th of Feb 2021.

I am doing this race not only for myself and in my mum’s memory, but also for all of the people who are now in the position that I was in when I was 16. I couldn’t save my mum in the end, but maybe I can in some way help anyone else who may be in the position I was in.

No one should have to go through what I did. Fuck Cancer.