Cancer patient will keep running despite prognosis

A mum-of-two who was diagnosed with stage four cancer earlier this year says she looks at every day as a "gift".

Despite emergency surgery to remove a tumour from her bowel, Rosie Howell is planning to run a 10k later this month.

Although the prognosis the 38-year-old has been given is poor, she said her will to live is "as strong as it has ever been."

"I don't know what's ahead of me, but I have got today," she said.

An NHS psychologist, Mrs Howell was unexpectedly diagnosed with bowel cancer in May, with a tumour "as large as a grapefruit" detected.

It had been growing close to her appendix for some time, and was therefore more difficult to detect.

Mrs Howell, who said she had an "intuitive feeling that something wasn't right", was referred for a colonoscopy and the tumour was discovered.

Her chemotherapy was due to begin at the start of June but when she developed a fever she was sent for further tests which showed she had sepsis and the tumour was beginning to perforate, leading to emergency surgery at the RUH in Bath.

Mrs Howell was then able to begin chemotherapy two weeks later and after power walking at first, started running in August - initially as a way of getting her strength back.

"When I was told I had cancer and the extent of it, I stopped running as it got quite uncomfortable," she said.

"At the beginning of the treatment I had all these predictions given to me that I would feel really sick, really tired, lose all my hair. I tried not to take it all in as everyone is different.

"It just seems that in terms of side effects I haven't had many. It has been a bit of a fight, I have a week on and week off with the treatment, and the first run back after a week off is hard.

"Sometimes I pat my body on the back and tell it I don't know how it is doing all this.

"My husband has been amazing and my children have helped equip me with a strong will to live."

Mrs Howell said when she was first given her diagnosis, she "couldn't look them [her children] in the face".

"I felt in pain, I felt wounded. I felt guilty and disassociated and numb, they were probably the two hardest days of my life," she said.

"But then the next day, when the children needed to be given breakfast and help with putting their shoes on, you've just got to get up and get on with it.

"It took me some time to come to terms that I might not have then, in terms of the future, but I've got now and I can make a difference now - I can fill them up with as much of me now as I am able to do.

"This experience has brought home the fragility of life.

"Every day I wake up and think what am I going to do with this 24 hours, this gift I've been given?

"I'm the most relaxed I've ever been because when you come to terms with the fact that you might die sooner than you thought you've got less to worry about in terms of the small stuff."

Mrs Howell will be running the Trial Mapledurham near Reading on 28 November.

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