Teesside woman swimming Lake Coniston end-to-end in mum's memory
Dr. Catherine Bladon's mum died two months ago from glioblastoma
A Middlesbrough woman's taking on a mammoth challenge today as a memorial to her mum who died two months ago from an aggressive form of brain cancer.
78 year-old Rosemary Hill was diagnosed in September last year with glioblastoma but only survived seven months.
Dr. Catherine Bladon and a colleague's husband are taking on an end-to-end swim of Lake Coniston.
About Rosemary's passing
She said: "It is a cruel disease and it took mum quickly. We feel robbed by this cancer. My mum comes from a line of women that live a long time and my grandmother was 96 when she died. My mum left at 78 and to us she left 20 years too early.
"She mounted a great fight against it but unfortunately the type of cancer that she had, this stage 4 glioblastoma, is really a battle that you just can't win. And I personally feel, as a scientist, I feel unhappy about that and I think there are things that we can do scientifically to address that. But as a human being, as her daughter, I feel incredibly sad about that.
"You can get a diagnosis of breast cancer and you have a plethora of options in how you're going to really fight that cancer and that's not taking anything away from breast cancer sufferers, it's still a horrendous thing to go through, but you have options. That's in stark contrast to the cancer that mum had.
"There are many different types of brain tumours, but glioblastoma, stage 4, being the worst. We don't really have any treatment options that have changed in the last 40 or 50 years. The prognosis is dire, six to nine months, 18 months maximum if you were able to have an operation. Unfortunately, mum wasn't able to have an operation.
"35 people get diagnosed with a brain tumour every single day and we don't have a huge amount of options and that needs to change scientifically.
"The thing about a brain tumour is it also brings in lots of those symptoms of dementia as well and in lots of ways we lost mum week after week after week up until the point that we actually lost mum. And that was incredibly difficult and incredibly traumatic and it's actually changed us fundamentally as people. It's a trauma we will carry with us and it's a trauma we will have to come to terms with over the years.
"For me at least it's my personal choice to try and be constructive in my grief. Endurance events, it's not something I'm naturally good at and so it's a challenge, it's a real challenge for me. But I watch mum go through radiation therapy and chemotherapy every single day for three weeks and that strength, the way she struggled, is something that I can draw on when I'm struggling through these events.
"Brain cancers are devastating. Brain cancers are one of the biggest killers in people under 40. And there's not an awful lot of research goes into, it's about 1% of the total spend on cancer research goes into brain cancer research. And we need to change that.
"I have no criticisms of mum's care, but as somebody that was older than 75, I felt like some of the clinical trial options were not available for her. I'm a realist, I understand that the outcome might well not have changed, but I do think we need to think about sort of making sure that our elderly are also treated with the same ferocity that our younger folks are."
About endurance challenge
Catherine added: "Mum's cancer is a cruel one. There are lots of things to draw on to give me strength to really do this fundraising, but I think it's mum's strength really that has really inspired me to do these events.
"I did lots and lots and lots of swimming, up to sort of 10 to 15 kilometres a week worth of swimming. So literally hours and hours in the pool, plus on the weekends going up to the lake and swimming in the lake for hour upon hour upon hour, plus a lot of dedicated weight training to really work on the muscles that are required for swimming.
"I've done the training, the distance should be doable, and there are lots of other variables; keeping your heart rate steady, not getting caught up with the adrenaline of it all, trying to stay calm, trying to zone out.
"My body's ready, whether my mind's ready, I suspect I'll be thinking about mum a lot and I'll be channelling her at my most difficult moments.
"I've done a number of these open water swimming events before this ever happened and my mum always came with me.
"I was sat with her in the hospice and I said, 'mum, I'm going to the lakes this weekend' and she actually opened her eyes, she hadn't opened her eyes for days and she said to me, 'swimming again?' And so actually this feels particularly poignant and I do think she'd be very proud of me. I think she'll be there with me every stroke."