Where to begin with the shock and terror of a cancer diagnosis at age 46. I finished 2023 with a bit of inexplicable fatigue. Nothing that made me suspect anything sinister was going on, but I do remember saying to my wife “I don’t want to do anything this Christmas, I’m so tired I just want to lay on the sofa and watch films”. Well who doesn’t feel like that after a year of hard work? By the time we reached February 2024 I was getting some strange intermittent night sweats, and by Easter I found myself so fatigued I didn’t join the family in a walk around a lake. That spring I was struggling at the allotment and finding myself sitting down on a log more than I was up digging beds.
Off to the GP I went in early April. Some blood tests became slightly anaemic results by May. Chest and rib pains saw me get a clear X-Ray but an ultrasound in June picked up an enlarged spleen. “Best get that checked urgently” said the ultrasonographer – and she may well have saved my life. By the end of July my new haematology consultant at East Surrey Hospital had diagnosed me with stage 4 Hodgkin Lymphoma. This after a bone marrow biopsy, CT scan, lymph node biopsy and PET scan.
Stage 4 means it’s widespread throughout the upper body, mostly in lymph nodes but also, in my case, the spleen and some bone. Far from ideal but still curable 80% of the time. I began chemotherapy on July 31st 2024 – once a fortnight for 12 weeks (or 6 months). It’s quite a marathon I can tell you, and as a person with health anxiety it’s a real challenge. Imagine being afraid of snakes, then being told you need to handle snakes every week for 6 months, that’s the level of fear I was at most of the time. Every time they took my pulse at hospital it was (and often still is) well over 110. With only limited access to my horticulture for managing my mental health due to fatigue and a need to avoid infection risk from scrapes in the garden, I found it tough. Growing plants has been how I manage my anxiety and IBS for over a decade.
Make every day count
I had a good interim scan following 2 months of treatment, and there were high expectations for complete remission in January, but the lymphoma decided to pop back up in my hip on an end of treatment scan in March 2025. I felt like a bit of a fraud having rung the end of treatment bell at the hospital chemosuite. Despite all this however, I actually felt pretty healthy for the first half of this year. I gradually started to get back on top of my allotments and garden. Realising that at some point treatment was likely to restart, I tried to make every day count. That’s all you can do really with cancer hanging over your head. Each morning you wake up into a nightmare… instead of from one, but a new day is a day of opportunity if you can persuade yourself to see it that way. And I decided to crack on with growing a giant pumpkin this year, even if I couldn’t be sure I’d be available to see it through to harvest.
Some will know that in 2022 I achieved a personal best with a giant pumpkin weighing 677lbs, using a seed I’d cross bred during the 2020 lockdown period. Part American monster (weighing over 1800 lbs over there) pollinated with a Peskett allotment inbred of a few generations (never exceeding more than 500lbs). The combination of genes worked and I had a fabulous time driving that 677lbs beast around the M25 in a truck to RHS Hyde Hall after lifting it with the help of Daniel Brown the Dorking horseman and Hugh Broom the local farmer.
I wanted to do my best to repeat that fun this year and my aunt had sent me a new Howard Dill winning seed from America. It wasn’t going to be easy coming out of 6 months of chemotherapy with a somewhat ravaged body. My lower left leg was swollen up by about 20% more than normal until May, I also had what they call neuropathy in my left foot (tingling and numbness). Digging was a physical challenge, my teenage son helped me a lot and between us we managed to clear an area of around 200 square feet for a giant pumpkin plant to spread and root in. These plants root as they spread, especially if you bury the vine to help it do so. More roots means a bigger pumpkin.
Thankfully with the reestablishment of a drip hose from a water butt, I managed to reduce the physical load of watering and feeding. A friend and fellow allotmenteer was able to assist in filling the water butt and turning the tap for me if I found myself either too tired, on holiday or undergoing scans. By early August I began fresh chemotherapy treatment which is designed to rid me of the lymphoma again and set me up for a stem cell transplant at Royal Marsden in Sutton at Christmas time.
Any giant pumpkin grower will tell you that July and August are the important times for a big pumpkin, regular watering is vital – so heatwaves aren’t a great thing and neither is chemotherapy! This time around I’ve had a picc line fitted in my arm (like a permanent cannula that runs direct to a large vein near my heart). It makes chemotherapy easier to give but I was told not to lift anything over 10kgs. That also made lifting watering cans a challenge, my wife and son spent a lot of time helping to follow my instructions on application of Kelp and Seaweed etc. on top of the general water butt applications.
£1000 raised for the hospital
Thankfully we managed to grow a reasonable giant pumpkin. I named it Abdul after my haematology consultant, I always name my big pumpkins each year. The nights actually became quite cold a little early this year. Once we dip below 15C at night the daily weight gains drop significantly on all squashes and pumpkins. Add that to some severely burned leaves from the heat waves we experienced, and you have a slow pumpkin which has decided the season is done and that it’s time to bow out.
The pumpkin’s measurements put it at around 150kgs / 330lbs with a circumference of just over 100 inches. The folks at Tulley’s Farm in West Sussex kindly agreed to make a donation to East Surrey hospital’s chemotherapy suite in exchange for the pumpkin going on display there. A local car hire company called Kendall Cars agreed to lend me their truck for a weekend free of charge. Now all I needed to do was repeat the horse sledge and telehandler lift technique with Daniel Brown and Hugh Broom. Oh… and persuade some fellow plot holders to help shift the pumpkin about a bit from sledge to pallet.
I’m pleased to say that despite being a little tired on the day, as I was only 11 days out of my most recent chemotherapy infusion, all went smoothly and Tulley’s Farm have given a whopping £1000 to the Surrey & Sussex Healthcare (SASH) Charity Cancer Fund. My efforts are also gaining some recognition in the media with Greatest Hits radio reporting on this today at the top of each hour and a story on Surrey Live.
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