Background

November 1984

I am having a shower and shaving my legs in at best tepid, more honestly cold, water in a damp and slightly dingy student house rented by my best friend Carolyn and some other friends from College. I am hoping to meet up with an on-off boyfriend at a party in a rented room above The Cape of Good Hope, hosted by Carolyn and some others whose birthdays are also in late November, including an ex of mine. All of which makes it sound as if I was more interested in my ‘love’ life than my medical studies. This was, of course, true but rowing was even more important than either of those. One of the other co-hosts was a squad tryout rower called Francis, who had invited his squad compatriots to the party.

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We all arrive early as befits hosts and the room looks huge, with a bar at one end. One of the first guests to arrive is a 6’3+” mate of Francis’s who is perhaps the most gorgeous creature I have seen so far at Oxford and I’m in my second year. Even more amazingly, he buys Carolyn and me drinks, gin and tonics to be precise. It turns out that he is the only one of the squad rowers to attend (unlike the on-off boyfriend who is nowhere to be seen).

 

Fast forward a few months and several crossed wires later and I am still with the rower who it transpires is called Rich. He is referred to as my ‘Adonis’ by my college friends who clearly can’t quite see why he’s with me. To be frank, neither can I but I’m not complaining. It’s not serious, just fun, etc, etc. By 2022 and three children later, even I have to concede that it’s quite serious, and no, I still don’t really know what he sees in me but I’m going with it.

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August 1985

I am just back from a holiday in Rhodes with my sister Helen, and Rich has returned from visiting his friend Mark in Jamaica. I have driven my Mum’s Morris Marina, complete with sweaty brown plastic seats, to Fairford in Gloucestershire where Rich’s parents live. His bedroom (where I am not staying, I hasten to add) has a king size bed and one entire wall taken up by a hand-drawn and painted map of the UK.

 

We are about to embark on a four day local walk from youth hostel to youth hostel devised by Rich himself and which he failed to complete on his own. He has also previously tried to do the South West Coastal path with some friends and did not finish that either. He starts talking about ‘A Coast to Coast Walk’ that he has found in The National Trust Book of Long Walks that he was given a few years ago. ‘It goes across the lie of the land’ he tells me (he has to explain that means it’s very up and down). Alfred Wainwright, who devised ‘A Coast to Coast Walk’, encourages the reader/walker to create their own walk. This was the seed of the idea that has become The HoCWalk.

 

Over the next few years, we completed Rich’s Cotswold walk together, as well as The Ridgeway, Offa’s Dyke (starting on New Year’s Day, which I heartily do not recommend) and, of course, Wainwright’s Coast to Coast Walk. Somehow, together, we could do what neither of us would have done on our own. We got married, climbed mountains, worked for a year in Newfoundland, moved to Kent and I started my surgical training. And I got ill. Very ill.

September 1993

I cannot get out of bed. I cannot dress myself. It takes over half an hour just to walk downstairs, but I am still working as a surgical Senior House Officer. I tell one of my Urology patients that he is dying. He tells me I look worse than he does and he has a point. I have been gradually deteriorating over several months. It started with my feet aching after a weekend on-call (Friday morning to Monday evening with no rest in the 1980s and early 1990s). Then my feet aching all the time and the difficulty descending the steep stairs in our 2up-2down every morning. The final straw was the 3 Peaks Challenge (Ben Nevis, Scafell Pike and Snowdon in under 24 hours) which we completed with Rich’s climbing club from work. Ever since, my knees, hips, hands, shoulders and even my voice box hurt morning and evening and wake me up nightly. I haven’t slept for more than one hour continuously for about six months. Coproxamol mixed with alcohol helps. I don’t need a pharmacist friend to tell me how dangerous that can be. Perhaps fortunately, my pain is so bad that respiratory depression is not going to happen. I wish it would.

 

I have acute rheumatoid arthritis. At first, I think that this is the end of everything that was important to me. I can’t exercise. I can’t look after children, even if I could have any. I can’t play the piano or sing. How can I continue as a surgeon? I tell Rich that if he leaves me, I’ll understand. I am not the woman he married anymore. I am also not quite in my right mind from constant pain and lack of sleep, as I realise now.

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I read Christiaan Barnard’s autobiography and discover that the most famous surgeon in the world developed acute rheumatoid arthritis as a trainee. Another old College friend called Frances tells me that I may as well take my surgical exams as this doesn’t mean I have to do surgery and I won’t lose anything by completing my fellowship. I also refer myself to Dr Sharma, a local consultant rheumatologist at Medway Hospital. He is kind, caring and eventually admits me to my own hospital for high dose, intravenous steroids. My disease is steroid responsive, just like Christiaan Barnard’s was. We were both very lucky. And I pass my surgical exams and become a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of England.

 

1996 - 2018

Over the intervening years, Rich and I discuss doing our own walk from the North Foreland in Kent to Cape Wrath, a sort of inverse Land’s End to John O’Groats. We have our three children, Catherine in 1996, Robert in 1998 and Thomas in 2003. I am appointed as a vascular surgery consultant at the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital, Rich starts his own pharmaceutical consultancy business and our original plans no longer make sense. We talk about ‘our walk’ from time to time, but always in the abstract.

 

My sister Helen develops leiomyosarcoma and embarks on her bucket list. She dies in May 2015. I am left grieving and with a niggle at the back of my mind that I was given a second chance and I really must do something.