A week before Christmas last year, Echo reporter Jill Neill 49, from Melsonby, near Richmond was diagnosed with advanced ovarian cancer. After a course of chemotherapy, she signed up for Cancer Research's Race For Life, which takes place next month. In the first of a series of training diaries, she describes the agony of getting back into shape.
IT'S nine months since I did any exercise. A badly swollen leg - the first sign that I had what turned out to be ovarian cancer - and the extremely unpleasant side-effects of the ensuing four months of chemotherapy have conspired to create a couch potato. A combination of inactivity, steroid medication, menopausal symptoms and comfort eating took their toll on my waistline and added a stone to the extra two stones I was already carrying. Holding down a full-time job during treatment left little energy or enthusiasm for exercise.
But the sickness, joint pains, fatigue and that underlying, all-consuming feebleness which only fellow chemo patients will understand are fading and I have pledged to complete the Cancer Research Race for Life 5k women's run in Darlington's South Park on June 10.
My final chemo session at the wonderful gynaecological oncology unit at Middlesbrough's James Cook University Hospital was on April 18. Twelve days later, with the side-effects subsiding, I dug out my trainers and the beginners' training schedule I'd found on the internet.
Now, I'm no newcomer to jogging. I've completed the Great North Run three times without resorting to walking, the last time in 2004. But cancer and chemo seem to have robbed me of any vestige of fitness, and there were only six weeks until the race.
Walk for one minute, jog for one minute, repeat ten times, the schedule ordered. Easy peasy, I thought, heading out of my front door with trainers, trackies, water bottle and smug smile. Twenty minutes later, you'd have thought I'd tackled the Marathon des Sables. I was absolutely whacked out, gasping, nauseous, weak as a kitten and my eyes stung from rivers of sweat cascading from my chemo-bald scalp.
But I felt great; normal life had been resumed and I was on my way back to fitness.
The schedule uses increasing spells of alternate jogging and walking to build up to running continuously for half an hour. I estimate I can probably shuffle my way round the Race for Life in 40 minutes and trust that a sense of occasion will spur me through the final ten minutes.
By run number two, I had invested in a baseball cap to protect my scalp from the sun and my eyes from the sweat - with no eyebrows or lashes, there's nothing to divert the saline torrent.
It was a beautiful evening and I thoroughly enjoyed jog-walking my way along a country lane on the outskirts of the village. So much so that my last jog was accidentally three minutes instead of the prescribed two.
But I'd misjudged my times and distances and had to spend ten minutes walking home, by which time I was shivery and paranoid about catching a cold. My immune system has been trashed by the chemo and a minor chill can turn into something nasty. Early in my treatment, I was hospitalised when a cold became a very serious chest infection and I spent four days on antibiotic drips, oxygen, nebulisers and everything else the NHS could throw at it.
But a few drops of echinacea tincture in my post-run glass of water and a handful of vitamin C tablets for good measure seem to have seen off any bugs this time.
At the end of week one, feeling bold, I missed out some of the walk breaks and managed to run for six consecutive minutes - admittedly slightly downhill all the way. I was chuffed, dead proud of myself.
Seconds later, while cooling down with a few muscle-easing stretches - the bench on the green is just the right height for the hamstrings - I caught a glimpse of myself in a nearby wing mirror. Not a pretty sight. Two sniggering boys kicking a ball about nearby were obviously of the same opinion and I felt like the village idiot.
But what the heck, I'm on my way to losing the excess weight, getting fit will surely help keep the cancer in check and I can't wait to line up for the race.
* Anyone wishing to sponsor Jill can contact her at The Northern Echo's Richmond office on 01748-850407.
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