After more than thirty years working as a cancer nurse, Paddy Stevenson said it felt "ironic" to fall ill with the disease himself - but now he wants to shatter taboos and give back to the NHS.
Crawcrook man Paddy, 56, was diagnosed with a brain tumour "the size of a golf ball" in April 2022. A senior manager working in cancer care at the Freeman - and involved in the foundation of the Sir Bobby Robson Foundation - Paddy is more used to supporting others with the disease.
But he became progressively more unwell in the early part of 2022 - losing four stone, suffering with sickness and diarrhoea - but his symptoms mystified medics until he suffered a collapse and a fit in April. Rapidly, he was rushed for a brain scan - which discovered a huge tumour - and the next day he underwent brain surgery.
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Since then, Paddy has in many ways recovered - though he has lost sight in his right eye and has poor hearing on his right side too, and even had a heart attack just before Easter this year. He puts this down to the debilitating impact of cancer and recovering from surgery.
Now though, he has shaved his hair and beard and raised more than £500 for Maggie's - the centre based at the Freeman which supports those in the North East affected by cancer. Paddy knows Maggie's well, and has also been attending the Maggie's Brains support group for those with brain cancer.
Speaking to ChronicleLive freshly shorn, Paddy said the community - and especially his local barber - had rallied around his plan to raise cash, and he underwent the shave at the Fox and Hounds pub on Saturday. He said it had gone "brilliantly".
He explained his story, adding: "I feel like I have really achieved something. The whole community rallied around and it was fantastic - and incredibly we've raised £576. The first thing to say is I have worked for the NHS for 37 years. Apart from when I was a student, all of that time I have been working in cancer care, cancer treatment and cancer research.
"And last year, I was diagnosed. I had been unwell for a long time. I had been losing weight, vomiting, suffering with diarrhoea. I had lost four stone. But I then had a collapse and a fit and was rushed to the RVI. There was a massive cricket-ball sized tumour in my brain."
Reducing the stigma around cancer is something close to Paddy's heart. He said: "One of things I wanted to do was to talk about it.. There's still a massive taboo about talking about cancer - ''the C word'. For me I had the brain surgery and I'm recovering.
"I'm blind in my right eye now, and my hearing is not great on that side. But that's a small price to pay to be here. There's a reason God gave me two eyes so I have a spare! I have been blown away by the care - and of course a lot of the people who have been looking after me have been colleagues.
"I'm really chuffed at being able to do something to tackle the taboo. It's one of the key reasons [my wife] Sue and I have tried to be so open about it."
Paddy and Sue met working in a chemotherapy day unit. He said: ""There's this taboo about talking about cancer. People can think that if they find something wrong they'll just keep it quiet, thinking 'if I don't talk about it, it'll go away'. And then that means what can happen is you are diagnosed that bit much later.
"It's ironic, isn't it.. But I had worked in cancer care for so long but knew less than I'd thought about the impact it has on you, physically and emotionally. It's tough trying to overcome this. The big thing for me is to give something back."
Now, looking ahead to becoming stronger and getting back to "the real Paddy", the nurse - who continues to chair an ethics committee greenlighting NHS research in cancer and in Covid - hopes to go to Boston and Shanghai, get back to umpiring on the local cricket circuit and enjoying war games.
And, if you see him with his eye patch, he's more than happy to talk about how he got it. It's not because he's a pirate, it's because he had cancer.
Help Paddy get closer to his £1,000 fundraising target here.
