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How one Preston man’s DIY accident led to an ‘out of the blue’ cancer diagnosis
A couple have taken life into their own hands after a shock diagnosis that “came out of the blue”.
In 2020, Steve Brown from Preston was building a fence panel outside his home and suddenly experienced a sharp pain. At the time, he was talking to someone with a cup of tea and forgot his DIY project was there and accidentally walked into it.
This started off with a pain in his side and as the agony worsened, Steve assumed he had broken a rib. Ultimately, this led the 50-year-old to visit A&E, with doctors thinking he’d had a blood cot. However, a few days later after a scan, medical experts noticed an anomaly with his kidney and things turned a lot more sinister than first expected.
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After the coronavirus lockdown had just begun, Steve Brown visited the hospital and was given life-changing news. The 50-year-old promised the doctor he’d return in an hour for an emergency CT scan, but before then, he had to tell his wife Claire, what he had just found out.
Steve told Claire, 43, that he had cancer which had spread, with the doctors saying the outlook wasn’t good. As Claire took in the news, her face turned to that of sheer panic and let out a primal, panicked noise that only someone in deep pain can muster.
As the timing of Steve’s diagnosis coincided with the coronavirus pandemic, Claire reflects on the fact she was unable to accompany her husband to his appointments. “I’d sit outside the hospital and stuff like that, or sit at home and wait,” Claire stated.
After several hours of his scan, Steve found out he had a large kidney tumour on the pleural sack and at least 12 small tumours across both of his lungs. After various scans, operations and treatments, Steve underwent some more treatment at the Rosemere Cancer Centre in Preston, called double dose immunotherapy. This uses the body’s immune system to fight cancer cells, with one medication working to stop the cancer cells from hiding and the other to supercharge your immune system to hunt down and destroy these cells.
On Christmas Eve 2021, he was “given the best Christmas present ever”, his tumours had shrunk by around 50%, which only 10% of patients experience. However, in the following three month period, his immunotherapy had stopped working and his tumours had doubled in size and received a letter from the hospital stating that his treatments now are for palliative care only.
Ever the positive man, Steve then went for a week of radiation therapy and afterwards, continued on his climbs, with a walk up Snowden, then Mynydd Mawr. Upon his return, he underwent another scan which showed his tumours had shrunk by 50% again and the immunotherapy was still working.
In 2022, things started going downhill again, but following some CT scan results, Steve was given some heart-wrenching news – almost no visible cancer was visible. Now, every three months, Steve undergoes scans to see what’s going on with his condition.
Claire said: “That’s how we’re living at the moment, just three months at a time. But things are really good at the minute, the latest scans showed that there was currently no visible cancer, so it’s going amazingly well.
“I’m just going to try and kill him off walking now!” Steve found his course of treatment particularly hard as he’s a self-confessed “busy bee”, meaning he’s always been used to keeping himself active and has had to succumb to the illness and resting as much as possible.
As a result and in an attempt not to let “cancer win”, Steve decided to complete the Yorkshire Three Peaks challenge – a message to the universe that he wasn’t going to give up.
Claire said: “The double dose [immunotherapy] that Steve had, it’s all new. So basically, because it’s all new, we don’t know what the future holds.
“This cancer could stay at bay, or it could come back. So it’s sort of living with that. So, every time a scan comes round, you think, oh God and you get a little niggle or he’d get a pain in his side when he’s waiting for his latest result and you think, oh is it cancer? Is it back?”
When Steve was told how much his cancer treatment was in monetary terms, he said it was a “staggering figure of money”. He added: “When an organisation is spending that amount of money on you, you do feel a little bit like, why have you picked me? It’s that kind of attitude, because it’s a phenomenal amount of money that they’re spending. So, what we did, we decided that we would never ever be able to repay that money, it’s just too vast. But what we would do, we would dedicate ourselves to give something back.”
This ethos has driven Claire and Steve to complete the ‘Baby Goats Step’ challenge – 32 summits in 30 days, across four counties. With their training well and truly underway, the couple are in the middle of completing their mountain challenge, which will include one million steps and around 50,000 feet of climbing – the equivalent of climbing Mount Everest twice. It will see them completing walks in Lancashire, with Rivington Pike, Nick Nook, the Tolkien Trail and Darwen Tower.
The couple will also be completing walks in Yorkshire and in the Lake District. Amongst these walks, Claire and Steve will also be climbing various mountain summits, including Snowden and on the 30th day, the very last day of the challenge, they will be undertaking the Yorkshire Three Peaks – Ingleborough, Pen Y Ghent and Whernside.
Claire said: “Steve is probably a little bit more private than I am and at the beginning, he didn’t really want to share his story. But, it gives other people hope that get that terminal diagnosis.
“In the beginning, when you’re first told, you start thinking about what the future holds don’t you? You start thinking about funerals and what not, but he never did that. Straight from the off, he was ‘I’m not going to be a statistic, I’m going to fight this’ and being mentally strong and it gives other people hope, that even with a terminal diagnosis, you can still carry on with life.”
You can donate to Claire and Steve’s efforts by donating to Cancer Research UK here. You can also follow the couple’s challenge by visiting their website and blog.
