Real Stories: Kevin’s Story

Video script

Kevin: In 2014 I was diagnosed with incurable prostate cancer and given as little as two years to live. Eight and a half years on, I’m still alive and still running.

November the 6^th 2014, my wife and I were invited back to the doctor’s office to sit and talk about the results. And he said, you know, “You’ve got prostate cancer and it’s spread.” And I said “Well what does that mean, how long will I live for?” And he said, “Well, if you’re lucky, maybe two years.”

My wife and I just burst into tears. Suddenly, I’m in this room with my wife and my life’s over.

Unless you’ve actually had the words “You’ve got cancer” said to you, you have no idea. You can hear a thousand people tell you, but you have no idea. That camera zoom moment when it’s suddenly “Vwoop” and it’s just you.

You know I remember crying a lot the first couple of months. I cried a lot for the first couple of days for me. And then I got out of that and I then cried for my family because I didn’t want my kids to have no dad. I didn’t want my wife to not have a husband.

What you need to do then is find something that you like, find something you love. For me it was running and my family. Those two things are what got me out of it. There is no right or wrong. It’s just something that you enjoy doing, something that is a focus, something you want to see happen.

Don’t ever, ever think you can’t chase a dream, because you can.

Before I was diagnosed with prostate cancer, I used to run as a way of staying fit. I had a pretty full on job, and so I used to run maybe one marathon a year, and I had only done that since the age of about 45.

When I was in my twenties I bought a magazine, and in the magazine it talked about this crazy desert race called the Marathon des Sables, and I always wondered how anyone could ever do it, because I used to run a half marathon, collapse over the finish line and not be able to run one step further, and here were people running 250 kilometres in a week in the Sahara over massive sand dunes in the heat. And I thought, “That’s just not possible.”

Roll on to when I had my horrible diagnosis and I managed to run two marathons on chemotherapy. The next thing on my list was this Marathon des Sables.

So, April 2016, there I am on the start line of the Marathon des Sables in the Sahara, absolutely unconvinced I would finish that race, but so elated that my foot was on the start line, something that wasn’t even going to be possible in November 2014, when I was told I was almost going to be dead by that stage.

That first Marathon des Sables for me was the race that meant everything. It was the race I was never going to run. It was a dream that I had age 20-something that was never going to happen. And here I am with terminal cancer and I’ve just actually created my dream. I made it happen.

Once I got diagnosed, I kind of realised I could run and I used it as a force for good, used it as a way of trying to encourage people to live their best life and not give up and fundraise. All the money I have ever raised, I’ve never take a penny of it. I pay for every race myself. All that money goes to charity. And that’s so important to me because I don’t want other men to be in my situation in time to come.

So, you know, I’ve got two sons. They’re currently 23 and 18 years old. By the time they’re 40, I don’t want prostate cancer to be a killer. And the only way we’ll stop that is through more research.

I’ve probably run a marathon distance, I don’t know, well over 100 times now. In fact, I’ve run over 15,000 miles since I was diagnosed. It’s made me far more focused on what’s right in the world. It’s made me a far better person. I have a sense of purpose and worth that I never had before I was ill.

So please don’t believe that life is over because it’s not over in that moment. There are still things you can do to make your life fantastic.