Page 8 - BPW-UK - E-news - Edition 122 - June 2024 - PDF Format

‘You do know what “masses” means,

don’t you…?’

BPW member Libby Marks is running the Great North Run in September for
Children’s Cancer North. She explains why…

I never thought I’d be a runner. And I certainly never thought I’d have a child with Stage 4 cancer.
And yet here I am… preparing to run a half marathon to raise money for a charity that has greatly
supported my five-year-old daughter during her cancer treatment.

I’ll start at the beginning. The Great British Bake Off. Specifically the celebrity version. You see, as
a teenager in the 90s, I was obsessed with the TV show Friends. Not least because of the handsome
David Schwimmer who starred in it. So when I saw he was appearing in the Celebrity Bake Off for
Stand Up to Cancer, I tuned in, eagerly.

Like many of you, I expect, I love the show. But I used to always change the channel when the can-
cer stories came on before the adverts. ‘My life is stressful enough,’ I used to think, ‘Without having
to hear about people getting ill and dying.’

But on this occasion, I couldn’t find the remote control. So I had to ensure the traumatic tales of
poorly children and lost partners. And one stuck with me. A bereaved mum talking about losing her
young son to cancer.
‘He was complaining about back pain…’ She said. ‘A few months later, he’d died.’

I shook it off and rued losing the remote. But it burrowed its way into my mind.
Partly because I’d been to the GP that very day with my little one, Annabel, who’d been complaining
for weeks about back pain.
‘Children are very unreliable,’ the GP said. ‘She’s very inconsistent about where the pain is. I don’t
think there’s anything to worry about really.’
So I didn’t.

But Annabel’s pain continued. She stopped eating. She got thinner.
The pain in her back spread to her hips. We went to the GP – and
were sent up to A&E – three times. It went on for five weeks.

I kept thinking ‘He was complaining about back pain…’ but I didn’t
dare imagine it could be anything so serious. The GP kept saying it
was a virus. ‘She’ll get better or she’ll get worse. Come back if she
gets worse…’

She got worse.
At the end of my tether at A&E
one day, I told the doctors
‘We’re not leaving here until we
have an answer…’
And then we got it.

‘There are masses around her kidneys. You do know what I
mean by “masses”, don’t you…?”’

And, just like that, our lives and hearts were shattered.