Swindon Harriers coach's widow fundraising for blood cancer charity

Sarah Lane Cawte's husband Mark died from myeloma in 2014

A woman whose athletic coach husband died of cancer says she wants to give other patients the chance he never had.

Swindon Harriers coach Mark Cawte died in 2014, a year after being diagnosed with myeloma, a type of blood cancer.

In the nine years since his death, his wife Sarah Lane Cawte has raised nearly £10,000 for the charity Myeloma UK doing various challenges.

"It's about visibility, It's making myeloma visible and raising awareness," she said

"It would be amazing if a cure was found, but for now we need to focus on giving patients a better quality of life and there needs to be more understanding of what myeloma is," she added.

Since Mark's death, Sarah has been undergoing fundraising challenges in aid of Myeloma UK, including a skydive

Mr Cawte first noticed something was wrong when he started to experience excruciating back pain.

Told it was caused by muscle strain by his GP, the coach and athlete was eventually referred for physiotherapy and an MRI which "puzzled" doctors.

The former church community worker later found he had broken his spine in two places and had to undergo emergency surgery to stabilise it.

Ms Cawte said: "It was terrifying. The surgeon said he found 'gunk' around his spine, that's the word he used."

It wasn't until two weeks later that doctors realised the "gunk" spotted by a surgeon was actually a cancerous tumour known as a plasmacytoma, which by Christmas 2013 had progressed to incurable myeloma.

What is Myeloma?

• Myeloma is a blood cancer arising from plasma cells and occurs in the bone marrow.

• It currently affects over 24,000 people in the UK. 

• Symptoms include back pain, easily broken bones, fatigue and recurring infection.

• It is a relapsing-remitting cancer, meaning that although many patients will experience periods of remission following treatment, the disease will inevitably return. 

Source: Myeloma UK

In the following months, Mr Cawte underwent radiotherapy and a second operation to stabilise his neck.

He was also due to receive a life-extending stem cell transplant in July 2014, but five days before his cells were due to be harvested, he collapsed at home and was rushed to hospital with suspected sepsis.

"I could see he was fading," Ms Cawte said.

"When you expect to spend the rest of life with someone, you don't think this will happen, not in their 40s," she added.

Mr Cawte died the day before his cells were due to be harvested and some of his ashes were scattered on the Swindon Harriers club track.

Ms Cawte has since dedicated the last nine years to fundraising for Myeloma UK, a charity that focuses on the incurable blood cancer and its related conditions.

Her fundraising challenges include a skydive and abseiling down the Forth Bridge in Edinburgh.

"Mark's diagnosis was prolonged. It was a bad experience altogether and I don't want other people to go through that.

"I wanted something positive to come out of a sad and difficult situation.

"The main thing is that, however bad the situation, we never lost hope through Mark's journey and I want to pass on that hope to others.

"For us and for me, the hope didn't end, it's experienced differently. It's that hope I keep coming back to. 

"I think Mark would have been somebody who'd want to give something back. He would have gone into campaigning mode to try and make things better," she added.