Cathy Prouse ran the Staines 10k in memory of her husband John
Friday 14 July 2023
Cathy Prouse and ‘Team John’ fundraised for us by running the 2023 Staines 10k in memory of her husband John, who died of bowel cancer.
My husband John was diagnosed with bowel cancer on 1 March 2022. He had no symptoms, but it was picked up by the routine NHS bowel cancer screening. John had surgery to remove the tumour in early April and after an eight day stay in hospital, he came home and made a good recovery. Unfortunately, the cancer had already spread to the surrounding lymph nodes and also into his liver. The proposed treatment plan was six sessions of chemo on a fortnightly cycle and then review, and hopefully have surgery for a liver dissection.
The oncologists were positive, and we tried to remain so. The chemo was progressively hard for John which made him very tired. In late August, a week after his fourth chemo session, John went upstairs and never came back down. He'd suffered a pulmonary embolism. A neighbour, Alex, helped and performed CPR and the ambulance crew got John to hospital where despite their best efforts, they told me there was nothing further they could do, and I made the hardest decision to stop treatment. My entire world was ripped apart - John was my life.
A few weeks later, my friend Kieran reminded me of a promise we had both made to John, that we'd do the 2023 Staines 10k for Bowel Cancer UK. Having not done any running since leaving school over 35 years beforehand, I started ‘Couch to 5k’ in mid-January this year. It was tough and I was massively out of my comfort zone, but that’s why I was doing it - to show John how amazingly proud I was of how he dealt with everything thrown at him last year with the operation and treatment. And although John wasn’t here, I was still intending to keep my promise to him.
Whilst I was doing the training, more and more family and friends asked to run with me and Kieran and we became ‘TEAM JOHN’. Not everyone in the group was a runner, but we trained in smaller groups, did park runs and supported each other via a WhatsApp group. I had such a fantastic amount of support from mine and John’s family and friends. On 14 May 2023, 17 of us consisting of myself, Kieran, Liz, Laura, Vic, Ben, Charlotte, Alec, Leigh-Ann, Carmen, Alex, Daniela, Sarah, Kayleigh, Dave, Mac and Jeff ran the Staines 10k. We had brilliant support at various points along the route, with friends, neighbours, and family there to cheers us on with homemade banners. Running across the line with Kieran and the others was very emotional, but we’d done it! It was an amazing day and I know John would have been so proud and probably a little overwhelmed at the amount we raised and the number of people that ran in his memory.
John wanted to raise awareness of bowel cancer and the importance of regular screening - one of his final Facebook posts was to tell everyone about his cancer and the importance of this test. I might not have got the outcome I wanted and I’m coming to terms with my life without John in it, but this is why it’s so important to me to raise awareness and also raise as much money as possible for Bowel Cancer UK. If what we raise helps stop just one family going through this loss and nightmare, we've achieved so much! You can give to Cathy's fundraiser by visiting her JustGiving Page.
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