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Daily Mirror
Daily Mirror
World
Amy Donohoe & Kieren Williams

Young man with no symptoms diagnosed with brain tumour in medical trial for extra cash

A man was diagnosed with cancer after it was discovered during a medical trial he took part in for some extra cash.

Iain Ward had been working in a gym in 2019 and decided to undergo an MRI as part of a trial to make some more money when they discovered something abnormal.

Even though the then 30-year-old had no symptoms, they found a large brain tumour that required surgery, DublinLive reported .

Throughout the entire operation Iain had to be awake and talking and it was later confirmed that he had Stage 3 brain cancer.

This usually brings a life expectancy of five years.

Iain said: “I was doing medical trials at the same time as well to make a bit of money on the side.

"One of those trials found out that I had a benign tumour but when I got it tested a second time round, it grew significantly and I needed surgery then I got the diagnosis.

He is trying to break the record for the most amount of money raised for brain cancer (thekingofchemo/Instagram)
Iain is now focused on raising money for cancer research (thekingofchemo/Instagram)

“I started focusing on dealing with the issue rather than feeling morbid about it.

"All human emotions are contagious. I don’t act like anything is going on and that sort of mentality rubbed off on my parents.

“Now I have clear goals I never really had before, I never really had that level of clarity.

"I did like my job. I'd highly encourage everyone in the world to never do a job that they don’t like because work is a good third of your life so don’t do it if you don’t enjoy it.

“I did enjoy my work but I thought, what is the purpose of it? It’s nice, it’s fun but it doesn’t really have an end result or goal.

"I didn’t want to own my gym. I enjoy what I do now."

Iain now spends his time raising money for cancer research and he wants to break the world record for the most amount of money ever raised for cancer research.

This year, he’s going to try and run the London Marathon 2022 in under three hours while dressed as computer game character Solid Snake.

But "The King of Chemo" is not looking for money from ordinary people.

He wants to grow his social media channels so he can reach out to big brands that will sponsor him for races and donate that money to cancer research.

He added: "Everything that I do now is kind of based around raising money for charity. It’s so easy to do it.

"You can just do anything where you’d normally be getting paid and give the money to charity.

"I do all these charity events like pub quizzes, run events with GymShark, I have an immense amount of freedom.

"Hopefully I’ll be doing a lot more before the London Marathon comes around.

"They’re all really fun to do, suppose you could add the same thing into the different marathons that I’ve done, they’re all events directly related to raising money for cancer research."

Iain’s motto is: “Three years left to live, two records to break, €2.3million (£1.9million) to raise and zero excuses.”

He can be found on Instagram with the username King of Chemo and his website is curecancerordietrying.com.

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