Two sisters with a passion for endurance events will be using pedal power to cycle non-stop around NI in just two days to raise awareness about pancreatic cancer.
The disease, known as "the silent killer", claimed the lives of one sister’s husband and the other’s best friend. Living with the grief of losing two loved ones, Andrea Harrower, from Dromara and her sister Cathy Booth, from Hillsborough, will set out on their epic 480 miles journey this Friday.
The idea for the challenge was Andrea’s husband, Paddy Harrower’s just five days before he died. The former PE teacher from Wallace High School had only 14-weeks to live from diagnosis on Easter Sunday, April 17 2022 to his death on July 24.
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Presenting late, his symptoms included indigestion and pain in the upper abdomen. Wanting something positive to come from a diagnosis of terminal pancreatic cancer, Paddy challenged his wife and sister-in-law to take on the endurance event to support local pancreatic cancer charity NIPANC raise both funds and awareness.
The money will go into research in memory of Paddy and a school friend of Cathy’s, Natalie Wilson who died age 40 from the disease, leaving behind three young children. The #PedalThePeriphery event will start at the gates of Ormeau Park on June 9, where George Ezra will be playing at the Belsonic Music Festival in Belfast.
Paddy adopted the singer’s uplifting Green Green Grass song during his illness and it was later played at his funeral. The pair will be followed on the ride by Andrea’s recently restored quirky, 1974 purple VW Beetle support vehicle.
Unroadworthy, it was repaired, free-of-charge, by Master Technician Mark Strutt, previously accredited through Volkswagen. His brother John died of the illness three years ago. Paddy’s bike will be mounted on top of the VW and will make the metaphorical journey along with Cathy and Andrea.
Andrea, a personal trainer said: "Cycling was so important to Paddy, his self-devised challenges and other official events at home and abroad. He used the bike to get to work and on family holidays.
"During his illness he set himself his own challenges as a reason ‘to get out of bed until the day he died.’ As a family, we and our two sons, Fraser, 19, and Alex, 15, and my sister and brother did a final ride out from home with him only a couple of weeks before he passed away.
"His motto was 'I’m not living with cancer; cancer is living with me and I’m taking it for a ride'."
During the two-day, clock-wise cycle around NI, the sisters are adopting the NIPANC charity slogan #TimeMatters to continue raising public awareness about the need to understand the symptoms of the disease and seek early diagnosis and treatment. Time also matters in reaching route points and the finish line.
A third hashtag, #IBlamePaddy is also being introduced to inject some fun into fundraising.
Andrea added: "#IBlamePaddy came about when people started finding out he was terminally ill. Friends and family felt they had no excuse but to join in some of the things he was doing including cold water swimming and kayaking. I don’t think he realised the impact he had on people.
"He was a modest man who wouldn’t like too much attention, but we think Paddy would be secretly pleased that the hashtag can be used by anyone fundraising to literally blame him on any crazy thing they do, to raise money and awareness for this important cause.”
Cathy, a former Director at BDO who now runs her own business consultancy said: “Within five years, I not only lost Paddy, an incredible brother-in-law but also one of my school friends Natalie of 30-years to this devastating disease. Andrea and I are on a mission to raise awareness and fund vital research so other people don’t have to go through what we have.
"We want as many people involved in fundraising as possible and will be talking to schools, rugby and cycling/sports clubs along the route about how they can be part of our journey and #IBlamePaddy too. For us, this had to be an endurance challenge, given what we have both personally experienced.
"We know, no matter what physical and mental distress and pressure we put on ourselves during this challenge, it is absolutely nothing compared to what someone on a pancreatic cancer journey is facing.
NIPANC’s Chairperson, Ivan McMinn MBE said: "We will be supporting Andrea and Cathy every push of the pedal on this epic cycle around the perimeter of NI. The difficulty of this challenge cannot be underestimated but the good it will do will be enormous. On Friday, may the road rise to meet you and the wind be at your back."
The first audit in over ten years into pancreatic cancer in Northern Ireland has revealed there has been an 86% increase in confirmed cases, rising from 152 in 2001 to 283 in 2020 since a previous audit was carried out in 2001.
The audit published in May was funded by NIPANC with the audit work undertaken by the Northern Ireland Cancer Registry (NICR), Queen’s University Belfast in partnership with HPB clinical staff in the Belfast Trust.
Its findings have prompted Mark Taylor, NI Director of the Royal College of Surgeons and Consultant Hepatobiliary and Pancreatic Cancer Surgeon to call for a strengthening of local pancreatic cancer services as ‘incidences are likely to continue to rise’ due to multifactorial reasons such as ‘increasing age, obesity and diabetes.’
The audit measures the pathway of pancreatic cancer patients during 2019 and 2020 in secondary (hospital) care and is the first audit of pancreatic cancer services in the UK since the pandemic. It will help to inform the soon to be established pancreatic cancer audit in England.
Mark, also a Trustee of NIPANC said: “We can see on the ground, how pancreatic cancer referrals are increasing, and we must strengthen our services in response.
"It is concerning the most common route to diagnosis was via emergency admissions (43%) and the majority of patients presented with advanced (Stage 4) cancer where the cancer has spread to a distant site. This underpins the importance of continuing in all our campaigning efforts to raise awareness of early signs and symptoms to enable timely diagnosis and treatment."
Pancreatic cancer symptoms include, jaundice, yellowing of the skin and eyes, changes to taste and toilet habits. For more information on other symptoms, or how to get support, please visit here.
Please click this link to donate to the fundraising appeal.
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