Story
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I am running the Brighton Marathon for the second year and expecting to take considerably longer this time, over 5 hours, and yet completing it will be a bigger triumph, coming 8 months after an accident and subsequent serious illness. In doing so I am raising money for The Brain Tumour Charity in memory of my late brother, Peter, and I’m hoping you can donate.
There was a booth at the finish of the 2017 Brighton Marathon, offering discounted entry for the following year’s race – feeling as I did, after stumbling over the finish line, I didn’t take them up on their generous offer; at the time I anticipated allowing a similar amount of time to pass for the painful memory to fade, as between this and, at the time my only, previous marathon 19 years before…and yet there I was, a few months later, responding to a marketing email and signing up again; anticipating fewer injuries, improved training, a thinner more athletic and doubtless more handsome version of me, taking to the start line in search of a quicker time. At that point, I had no idea of what the next year was to bring.
Many people say that the hardest day of training for any event is the first – I wouldn’t normally agree: trudging through the dark winter months the hardest days would be a freezing wet February morning starting at 5am. But this time, the first was definitely the hardest: It started in bed in September. OK, not that surprising, for most of us, our days start waking up in bed. This was a hospital bed. 5 weeks before, I had stalled my paraglider, when coming to land in a remote Spanish field, and broken: my left humerus (now held together with titanium plates), my T9 vertebra, and my sacrum. Two weeks later, recovering at home, I began to lose feeling in my fingers and toes and the strength in my arms and legs; after collapsing in my GPs surgery, I was taken to A&E and after a week of hospital tests and gradually weakening muscles, leaving me no more mobile than a sack of potatoes, I was diagnosed with a rare auto-immune neurological condition called Guillain-Barre Syndrome. I commenced treatment and was moved to a specialist neurological ward in Charring Cross hospital.
On their rounds each day, I had only one question for the doctors: “when will I be able to walk again?” and each day I got the same answer: “we just don’t know”. Guillain-Barre can range in severity from mild tingling in the extremities, to almost complete paralysis, leading to lung and even heart muscles ceasing to function. I was somewhere in the middle – I was lucky not to have to be ventilated, but I did suffer reduced lung function, complete loss of feeling in my arms and legs, substantial inability to move, and difficulty speaking and swallowing. I was however lucky, in that my recovery progressed faster than most. When I got bored of asking when I’d be able to walk again, I asked instead: “When will I be able to run again?” As Nick Hornby once wrote, it was like asking to borrow ten quid, getting turned down, and asking to borrow fifty-grand instead. I won’t hear a bad word said about the NHS care I received; on this occasion, the registrar was herself a keen runner:
“We just don’t know I’m afraid…rates of recovery vary wildly between patients”.
When I was initially diagnosed, the doctor told me he would tell me what he suspected on the condition I did not Google the disease until the diagnosis was confirmed; I lied that I wouldn’t, and soon found out why I shouldn’t: GBS is fatal in around 4% of cases; 80% can walk after a year and up to 90% eventually make a full recovery. ‘Eventually’. It can take years for the nerves to fully recover.
“I’m doing the Brighton Marathon next April.”
“Oh I don’t know about that” she laughed “we might have you doing a Parkrun by then.” To anyone unfamiliar, Parkrun is an fantastic community event, organising thousands of free timed 5km runs starting at 9am every Saturday morning, that started in Bushy Park, near where I live, fifteen years ago or so. It’s really misnamed, because you don’t have to run, and you’re just as likely to take to the start line with an elite athlete checking their training progress, as with a first timer intent only on walking the course.
“No, you don’t understand” I corrected her “I AM doing the Brighton Marathon next April”.
GBS affects both the sensory and motor nerves, attacking the myelin sheath and impairing the transmission of signals; the confused messages that do get through result in very painful pins and needles, as a result of which I was on strong neuropathic pain killers.
So, back to that first day of training – a few days before, the physios had taught me to shuffle onto a wheelchair, using my one good arm, and I’d briefly sat out of bed for the first time in 3 or 4 weeks: they now thought I was ready to stand. I couldn’t see it myself: true, I’d strengthened from barely being able to lift my legs from the bed, to kicking hard against the doctor performing their daily tests, but I still had no feeling lower than my knees. The physiotherapists wheeled me to the treatment room, and positioned me in front of a rotor stand, a sort of metal plate allowing patients to be swivelled in the standing position, with a bar around chest height to pull up on. One physio stood each side, one hand under my armpit and the other pulling up by my pyjama waistband, and a third stood in front in case I toppled forward. With all the strength I could muster, I pulled on the bar and pushed with my legs, and miraculously was standing, realising for the first time I could see over the head of the physio who had been treating me for the last few weeks. After only a few seconds, I collapsed unconscious onto the bench behind me, as the blood rushed to my feet, my body unused to being vertical. After coming round, I was wheeled back to bed, and collapsed exhausted, feeling as if I’d scaled Everest, and slept until dinner time.
The next day, I managed a few more seconds before feinting, and the next day more still, managing to sit down before the peripheral vision began to fade. A mirror was positioned in front, to allow me to see my own feet, which I began first to shuffle, then to march on the spot, still accompanied by three physios. A few more days and I could shuffle along the corridor with a walking stick, a preview of my ninety year-old self, and eventually attempt small stairs. After 5 weeks in hospital, and much to the astonishment of the doctors at the speed of my recovery, on 19th September I went home, aided by Yoshino.
By the weekend, I had walked the kids to the playground, rested there, then walked home; the next day, there and back without stopping. I began to walk each day in the park with my stick, each day a little longer, before eventually, I left the stick at home. By November I began to return to work, a few hours a day, a few days a week, but the forced effort was doing me good. I continued to walk each day, feeling very gradually stronger.
My first run came at the beginning of December, a short trot around the park, barely faster than walking pace…in fact, not even faster than walking pace. The muscle weakness in my legs, as a result of atrophy and of not yet recovered nerves, had left me with an altered gait, giving me painful knees and hips. I couldn’t feel my toes, in fact, as yet, I still can’t (not properly), but somehow I managed to hobble along.
I slowly began to run longer distances, still uncertain whether Brighton marathon was feasible, but hoping that it would. I’ve now decided, that despite far from ideal training, I will take to the start line on Sunday April 15th. Given my long story above, you may think that I’ll be raising money for a charity connected to my own illness, but I’m actually raising money for a cause more important to me than that.
Back in September 2014, three years before my own illness, my little brother Peter was taken seriously ill, and also rushed to A&E; there he was diagnosed with a terminal brain tumour, and given 6-12 months to live. Peter stubbornly hung on (yes, I know what you’re all think, that is a family trait), for as long as he could, cherishing every last moment with his family, before eventually passing away in July 2015.
The human body is an amazing machine, but it occasionally goes wrong, and when it does, what happens next depends upon the accumulate knowledge of medical science. In that sense, I was lucky, while GBS cannot yet be cured, doctors can keep you alive long enough for the body to repair itself. Peter was not so fortunate, because of their nature, brain cancers remain one of the most difficult to treat forms of cancer, and one of the leading causes of death for younger people. Continuing that research into potential treatments takes money, and that’s where you can help - I am fortunate, in that I have many very generous friends.
The Brain Tumour Charity are the leading charity funding research into, and support for sufferers of, Brain Tumours, and I am asking you to donate whatever you can spare to support them (this is not a charity place, all marathon expenses are paid by myself, and all donations will go to charity).
There is fundamentally only one reason to donate: one day, hopefully not too long from now, a doctor will stand at the foot of a hospital bed, smile and say to a brain tumour patient: “don’t worry, we can do something for this”, like they did to me, rather than lowering their head and saying “I’m sorry” like they did to Peter; and that will be in some small part because you made a donation in order that on Sunday 15th April, a fat banker will run, jog, walk, and possibly crawl around a marathon course.
Thank you for reading, and if you can, thank you for donating.