Jamie Hamilton and Edward Bayman are cycling in memory of our friend and colleague Roy Pitcher who sadly died on the 31 August 2012 from Melanoma skin cancer.  The cycle route stems approximately 250 miles and will be carried out over the course of 3 days from the 5 September 2013. To put this in perspective, we only purchased our bikes in June so haven’t had a great deal of time to either accustom ourselves to cycling or get fit, so it will no doubt be a huge challenge!  We have organised the trip ourselves so all donations will go straight to charity.  Andy Mallet has kindly agreed to drive a support car to provide supplies / puncture help etc.   

By way of further background information, Roy Pitcher was born in Jersey on 19th June 1973. He was educated at Victoria College and Warwick University, after which he returned to Jersey and qualified as a Chartered Accountant and Chartered Tax Advisor at Ernst and Young. He became a principal and founding director of Pentera Trust Company in 2005. Roy was married to Kari and they have a daughter Lily, aged 12. When younger, Roy enjoyed rifle shooting, participating with the Great Britain Athlings Cadet Rifle Team and Channel Island teams, as well as water skiing, gardening and competing in cycling and sea swimming races. 

Roy had a malignant mole first detected some 5 years ago and it was surgically removed. After this Roy followed a standard 3 monthly/ 6 monthly check up regime.

At a routine check-up in August 2011 it was detected that the melanoma had spread to the nearby lymph nodes and ultimately elsewhere in the body, leading to stage 4 advanced melanoma. 

After this diagnosis Roy was initially undergoing treatment while continuing to work on reduced hours. He was referred to the UK specialist centre for melanoma, the Royal Marsden Hospital in London, who enrolled him on a trial for Vemurafenib, a promising new drug for melanoma. This treatment successfully shrunk and controlled the tumours for six months from November 2011. 

Over the summer of 2012 Roy had a course of Whole Brain Radiotherapy in Southampton to control brain tumours followed by a local course of the other promising new drug for melanoma, Yervoy/Ipilimumab. 

During his medical journey Roy received treatment in Jersey, Southampton and at the Royal Marsden and also received support from Jersey Cancer Relief and Jersey Hospice Care. 

Roy was hugely appreciative of the great support and help he received from many institutions and charities during his illness, including Jersey Hospice and the hospitals in Jersey and Southampton.  Since Roy’s death, staff at Pentera, together with Roy’s family and friends have been focussing on various activities to help raise funds in excess of £30,000 for charities that helped Roy during his illness.      

After discussions with Roy prior to his death and our staff at Pentera, we have chosen charities that are doing great work in supporting the fight against Melanoma and that were not only a huge help and support to Roy as he went through this terrible illness, but that are in need of funding and support to help them continue to undertake their invaluable work. We hope that this will raise both funds and the profile of developments happening in this area, as well as awareness of some of the issues surrounding skin cancer.  You can help us by either donating on this page or through the details that can be found on Pentera Trust’s charity website page as follows: http://www.penteratrust.com/charities/how-to-donate/

Any support that you can provide to the charities (and us!) will be greatly appreciated.

 

Many thanks

 

Jamie and Ed