It’s an early morning in May and I am running through a field in Dorset. This time last year, I was so sick I could barely walk down the stairs. I was diagnosed with breast cancer in February 2007, aged 42. I had two rounds of surgery, five months’ worth of chemotherapy, followed by 15 sessions of radiotherapy, emerging from it all just before Christmas, weak, unfit and 2st overweight.
It felt like 10 months of gruelling treatment had aged me by 10 years. My hair was thin and my weight gain made me look (and feel) dowdy and middle-aged. I was so sick during the chemotherapy, there were days I couldn’t stand upright. For two or three days after each treatment I felt so nauseous that I could barely stomach a little dry toast.
Then the steroids I took to combat the nausea kicked in and I was so hungry I could have eaten my own arm. It was a crazed kind of hunger that I had no control of. As a result, the pounds piled on. I can’t blame all my weight gain on the cancer treatment, though. I was already overweight – up to 8% of breast cancer cases are attributed to a high BMI (body mass index).
As my health deteriorated, my lifestyle slowed to a sedentary pace and being unfit before diagnosis certainly makes going through the treatment process more difficult. Research shows that cancer fatigue affects 70% of people going through chemo and I was badly afflicted.
By the time it was over I was desperate to get fit, but had no idea where to start. There was no after-care advice on exercise. I was still very weak, and my confidence so low that the thought of going to the gym was horrifying.
Eventually, I decided to hire a personal trainer. I needed someone who would understand my particular circumstances and give me an individually tailored exercise schedule. This wasn’t the cheapest option, but I knew it was the right thing to do. Rather than relax I needed to learn how to move again.
When my trainer suggested I enter the Race for Life – a 5km fundraising run organised by Cancer Research UK – I dismissed it out of hand. How could I think about running, when I could barely walk? Then I considered the sense of achievement I’d have if I managed it. It was four months away. Could I? I had never run for a bus before but I decided to sign up.
The first time I tried to run, I managed to stumble about 200 metres (halfway around the field behind our house) before collapsing with exhaustion. It took weeks to be strong enough to make it all the way round. I was running every other day, adding one minute each time, until I ran for 10 minutes without stopping (three times around the field).
I was exhausted but overjoyed. I kept up my training religiously. There were days when I exceeded my goals and days when I didn’t. The weight started to shift at a steady rate of about 1lb per week and I was starting to regain my strength and confidence.
Then, a month before the race, I hit a wall. The furthest I had managed to run was 3km, split into walk/run intervals but, afterwards, I endured aching legs and a numb tiredness. My running high had evaporated and my hips hurt – a lot.
I had read that chemotherapy drugs can adversely affect joints and wondered if it was crazy to attempt running so far. I had spent my teenage years smoking behind the bike sheds, at college I was always the first to the bar, family life had made fitting in an exercise regime impossible and here I was after cancer, trying to get fit.
I started to research statistics about exercising after cancer and discovered that regular exercise can cut the risk of secondary cancers by up to 50%. I couldn’t understand why exercise programmes weren’t available to post-cancer patients on the NHS. Studies proving the beneficial effects of exercise go back to the early 1990s, but finding anything but general advice had been very difficult.
I thought of the charity fundraiser Jane Tomlinson who was given six months and ended up living for seven years, then dragged myself out again – slow, steady running, increasing my time and distance by tiny increments. As I ran, I visualised myself in the race and the sense of achievement I would feel.
Race day arrived very quickly. I had been praying for cool weather as Tamoxifen (the drug I will be taking for the next five years) impairs the body’s ability to regulate temperature and I had been permanently hot. The week before had been perfect. The day of the race, however, was blisteringly hot.
The Dorchester Race for Life is extremely popular, with 2,000 women racing. All I could make out as we arrived was a sea of pink. There were groups of women of all shapes and sizes and a festival atmosphere, with families on picnic blankets. Many runners wore names of people who had been affected by cancer on their backs and, during the warm-up with all 2,000 women moving in sync, I felt tearful.
But there was no time for sentiment – suddenly we were off. I ran with my friend Ros, who stayed close to me. Many women were walking and chatting, but I really wanted to run. The heat and bottlenecks were against us, but I felt I could do it. I came in with a respectable time of 44 minutes. It wasn’t going to break any records but I felt like Paula Radcliffe. Would I do it again? I’m not sure. Will I stop running? Not on your life.
· The National Association of Cancer Exercise Rehabilitation, nacer.org.uk; The National Register of Personal Trainers, nrpt.co.uk; Race for Life, raceforlife.org
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