Beat The Beast Challenge

An Audio Visual Guide to the Challenge

Back in December 2012 I left the Army after a demanding but rewarding 20 year career. Sadly, just 9 months later, in September of 2013, I was diagnosed with a brain tumour that we now know was triggered by a blunt force trauma that was sustained 15 years prior to diagnosis, way back, when I was a young officer with the 1st Battalion The King’s Own Scottish Borderers. By the time that they had found this Grade 1 tumour it had grown to the size of a small hand and pushed the centre line of my brain all the way over to just above my left ear. When we first met, after my second MRI scan, I discovered that my brain surgeon was astounded that I could even walk or talk. Shortly after that first meeting I developed Epilepsy, so had to surrender my driving licence, my safety boat licence, and my gun licence. It felt as if large chunks of me were dropping away seizure by seizure. Over time, and with further consultation, my tumour was declared terminal with a prognosis of, ‘at best, 3 years preceded by a rapid decline towards becoming a cognitive and motor function vegetable,’ and then the tumour jumped to a much higher grade requiring surgery as quickly as possible. Surgery could only remove 40% of the tumour. The remaining 60% was buried far too deep into the brain, but the confirmed diagnosis taken from the Biopsy which was removed during surgery, of a Grade 3 Anaplastic Oligodendroglioma, allowed my brilliant Oncology team to successfully fight to get me on to a European trial, which consisted of a full course of 30 back to back sessions of brain focussed radiotherapy, which had to start so very soon after surgery, and was then followed immediately by 12 monthly cycles of brain focussed chemotherapy, an entire year of Chemotherapy. My Oncologist told me that they couldn’t shrink, kill or cure the tumour. That this unusually robust treatment regimen was hopefully going to make my tumour stable for a while, put it to sleep so that they could extend my prognosis from 3 to 6 years, so that my children would be teenagers in the middle of high school, so older and better equipped emotionally to deal with my passing, and that this treatment plan would damage my brain. In the discussion with my Oncology team that followed I concluded that if I was to die anyway despite this robust treatment, but if it would allow the children to grow in age and experience before my passing, well then the brain damage didn’t matter, as I wouldn’t be around to worry about it, so I agreed that we should pursue this treatment option in order to buy me, and most importantly the children some time. During the treatment journey I set up this challenge to beat my beast, in order to reassure the children, while breathing hope, inspiration and encouragement into their lives, while also ensuring that my final days were not for nothing, but instead spent trying to save the lives and improve the life chances of as many people as I could, by asking everybody that I met to challenge me, through their sponsorship for the Disasters Emergency Committee, to beat my beast of a brain tumour.

After many dietary mistakes driven by doctor Google, which needed an entire course of treatment to put out the fire that I had lit within my own body, the NHS gave me access to a brilliant dietician who helped me to develop a balanced diet, which I then combined with exercise to create the balanced lifestyle, which I then tweaked to focus the ability of the balanced diet that I ate every single day to attack the cancer, while also reinforcing, with daily exercise, my immune system so that too could attack the cancer. I had designed my balanced daily lifestyle to reinforce the treatment that I was being given.

I took to the hills and mountains of the Trossachs National Park as it was the only place in which I could find peace from the fear of my immediate future and twice suffered an epileptic seizure on the mountains. On each occasion I was lucky to make it home and after the second occasion my GP, quite rightly, banned me from walking on my own. He demanded that I find a walking partner which I duly did to return once again to the mountains.

In September of 2016 my brain tumour, that they could not shrink, kill or cure, disappeared completely but I have been left brain damaged with Neurological Dysfunction and SMART Syndrome and fighting to get to a stage where my remaining half a fit brain can sustain me in employment.

I have been told by my neurologist that I will never recover the neurological and cognitive function that I once had, that as far as future employment was concerned, I should aspire to nothing more than volunteering in a shop for an hour a week.

I have been told by my Oncologist that this rare type of Glioma (Grade 3 Anaplastic Oligodendroglioma) that I have, has a nasty habit of returning. That it is impossible to rid my brain of every single tumour cell, and that it only takes one cell to be the catalyst for its return. They do not know what the trigger is for the regrowth but expect it at some point in each and every case such as mine. It is not possible to ever be completely rid of my tumour.

Now knowing that I am locked in a vicious, perpetual cyclic battle with a brain tumour that can only ever end in one way, I continue to follow my balanced daily lifestyle to try to prevent my tumour from ever returning and use the mediums of Golf, Music, Drama, Dance, Writing and even Juggling as vehicles on which to try to retrain and strengthen my brain for future employment.

Please challenge me to beat my beast of neurological dysfunction and to prevent my brain tumour from ever returning by sponsoring me for just £1 per month.

I guarantee you that every single penny raised goes to the Disasters Emergency Committee.