Project Overview

Inspired Living’s Cancer Research UK ride

“Venta-Venezia 999 for CRUK” September 2012

Aiming to raise £1M

My name is Tim Frank. I am a 49-year old Hampshire GP (senior partner in a large practice in Eastleigh/Chandlers Ford). My wife, Marey, died in 2009 from an aggressive, triple negative breast cancer. She was 45, leaving myself & two teenage children.

Marey was unwell for only 18 months & we knew for the last 6 months that she was not going to survive. During that period I had been incubating a plan to raise a significant amount of money for Cancer Research UK once the inevitable happened; turning what was a devastating loss into something positive.

I have 2 teenage children, Amy 19, now at Medical School herself & Joel 17, doing his ‘A-Levels at Peter Symond’s Sixth Form College, Winchester.

Throughout her illness Marey & I had tremendous support from our many friends, Amy & Joel’s swimming club, my practice staff, partners & patients, as well as the children’s excellent state school, Thornden. In this area of Hampshire our family is well known & the tide of goodwill offered a foundation to create a special project.

Phase one of the project involved cycling from Winchester to Gibraltar via Portsmouth, through western France and the spine of Spain. The University of Southampton is actively involved in medical research & a study regarding the effect of participation in the project was undertaken on the group. It demonstrated a significant improvement in physical & psychological well-being for those who took part, and which was still sustained after a year.

Additionally there was the personal aspect to the overall story regarding how ‘ordinary folk’ can turn adversity & grief into positivity & life.

Of course, as a GP I have spent much of my professional life dealing with this sort of thing & its fall out with my patients; how different it is when it affects one personally. Being a doctor, I aim to prevent disease, as well as cure & outline a ‘road map’ to better lifestyle choices for those who seek advice. This project offered a much broader canvas upon which to draw out these themes. It offered hope, a key feature in cancer care, as I found out so dramatically, and a chance to fight back against a shocking set of diseases.

I would like you to help meet the aims of this project for CRUK, my children, my friends & me as much as for future cancer sufferers. We have all benefited from looking forward with hope rather than backward with regret, and as we aim towards our fundraising total I remember Marey, this evening, on her birthday. She was a fantastic wife & mother. CRUK was HER charity & she would appreciate the sentiment that her death could have become a catalyst to help so many others.

Dr Tim Frank
11th April 2012