I’m running the London marathon 2025 for Cancer Fund for Children because every child and young person across The island of Ireland deserves to have a safe space to navigate their feelings of cancer and grief and feel understood and listened to like I did.

You can read my story below:

It was my 16th birthday.  We were due to go out for dinner to Deanes Meat Locker in Belfast. My mum had to take my dad an overnight bag to the hospital, expecting he would get back home after a few days; they decided that I should still have my special celebration, so my mum came home, collected us and we went to the restaurant. I didn’t expect my dad would be unable to come. I thought a few days in hospital would sort him out. It never occurred to me he could have cancer. He was healthy and rarely sick.

Ten days later on 1st December 2017, at 44 years old my dad was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.  In January, my dad had The Whipple Procedure – a surgery that takes over 7 hours – at the Mater Hospital, Belfast, followed by around 7 months of oral chemotherapy, during which time he continued to work full time from home as a Cybersecurity Analyst. There was then a break of about 6 months when we started to put cancer behind us. 

In April 2019, a CT scan revealed that my dad’s cancer had returned – this time the outlook was not good, and we were told by the Oncologist, that his cancer was incurable. A period of IV and oral chemotherapy followed, however both those interventions came to an end and my dad was referred to the palliative care team. He died in hospice on October 26th 2020, aged 47. I was at Uni in London by then so came home for what I thought would be two to three days as originally he was admitted for pain management. He stayed for over a week, so did I and mum. We took turns sitting up with him but every day his body weakened. He died late at night after a long fight.

I discovered Cancer Fund for Children when my mum was looking for some support for my sister early in 2019. She was trying to find other young people who were going through something similar.

From the first moment, I talked to our Cancer Fund for Children Specialist, Gareth, I felt such a sense of relief. Gareth completely gets young people.  He’s on their wavelength.  He has such a depth of knowledge, of resources and experience to draw upon. And, on the flip side, he recognises the concerns parents have navigating these uncertain waters.

The support we received was completely young person-centred, from the residential group work, through to the individual support and therapeutic short breaks for the whole family at Daisy Lodge. I can honestly say without the support of Cancer Fund for Children I wouldn’t be where I am in my life today. I owe a lot to the charity and especially Gareth, who has continued to support me and champion my successes even until now.

Cancer Fund for Children’s individual support is unique.  It helps the children find ways of living well with their reality and provides them with a safe environment to explore their feelings and fears. Importantly, individual support has provided us with strategies and tools to help them make sense of our feelings and our world, especially at a time when our peers were occupied with teenage life.