Hospice News

Fundraising Stories

A 15-hour workout in honour of Mark, an inspirational gym member who has terminal bowel cancer, is taking place on Saturday 22 June at Kokoro Fitness. All the money raised from the event is going to the charities supporting Mark and his family, St Peter's Hospice and Bowel Cancer UK. 

Mark was a regular at the gym in Iron Acton, having joined it with his life-long friend, David. David says: "The gym's held a very special place for us and is the perfect place to honour Mark. He went into his diagnosis being the fittest and healthiest ever which did help him in many of the treatments that he's had. We've planned a themed workout for every one of the 15 hours, and overall, 51 people are taking part. We end with 'The Butch', an intense workout reflecting Mark's endurance. His teenage daughter and her friends will join us for that workout and we're hoping Mark can do the final bit, to finish it in style."

Best friend David is supporting Mark

Prior to his diagnosis, Mark says that he had no idea that he was ill. In November 2021 he felt an intense pain on his right-hand side and at first medics thought he had appendicitis. However, a scan revealed that Mark's bowel was completely blocked by a cancerous tumour and the cancer had spread to his liver. 

Mark says: "At that point they believed they could cure it so later that day they took the biopsies and found that the cancer was in every section of my liver. They stopped counting at 18 tumours and at that point my diagnosis changed to palliative care. It was a huge shock and blow to me.

"The Emotional Support team at the Hospice are providing counselling for me, my wife and daughter. The Community Nurse Specialist team checks in with me too and I know that if we desperately need something such as extra medicines, we can contact them too. It's invaluable knowing that."

Mark's best friend, David, is organising the fundraiser at Kokoro Fitness. David has planned the full 15 hours with individual workouts each hour to honour Mark’s endurance in surgery. 

The event is named 'The Mother of all Workouts' after the 15 hours Mark spent having his cancer cut out in a procedure dubbed 'The Mother of All Surgeries' by medics. Doctors performed highly invasive surgery on Mark, involving an incision from his sternum to his pelvis to cut out all the cancerous cells, followed by heated chemotherapy to remove any remaining cancer cells. Mark lost part of his liver, bowel and gall bladder in the procedure.

Mark and David enjoying a beer at a festival

Mark says: "It's such massive, invasive surgery that there's a risk you might not make it through. I had scans afterwards which showed no evidence of cancer, but then I some more scans which showed that some of the cancer cells have grown back. I'm a year down the line now and I wouldn’t have had that extra year if it wasn’t for the surgery. My life is fairly independent at the moment - I get tired and I have a big scar but apart from that you wouldn't know that I've had an operation of that magnitude, which is incredible really."

David says: "Mark's a very special character and he's very stoic. He's carried on relentlessly in his pursuit to not take no for an answer. I said that when we joined the gym our dream was to do some competitions together and it never quite worked out. But this event will come a close second.

"One of nicest things about doing this is the lovely messages of support we've received. Friends we haven't seen in years have been in touch, sending messages and donations. Many have shared messages about the support the Hospice has offered them and that's made us realise what a valuable service it is to the local community. We hope by doing this we can raise awareness that bowel cancer isn't an old man's disease and raise funds to support these charities."

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