Dad looked on St Columba's as a place for a holiday

Published on Thursday 29 April 2010 09:40

After losing her father Robert to cancer, daughter Tina recalls how his stay at the hospice helped family

When terminal illness strikes, the diagnosis can deliver a knockout blow, not just to the sufferer but to their loved ones too, especially children. As part of our fundraising campaign to help build St Columba's a new home, SUE GYFORD speaks to one family who coped with help from the hospice – and a hairy-footed horse

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WHEN a child discovers their dad has terminal cancer, it's a terrifying experience.

For 12-year-old Tina Summerhill, finding out her father Robert was sick was even worse – she also had to endure an escalation of the bullying she'd suffered since primary school.

After his diagnosis, the former Musselburgh Grammar pupil, now 16, paid tribute to her dad in a school essay, but classmates saw it as a chance to victimise her.

She says: "There was a story for English you had to do and it was about the person that you most admired. I wrote about my dad and everybody started slagging me, that I was sick and I shouldn't be doing it. I kept it to myself but the lass that gave me a hard time lives round the corner."

Over the next six months, she and her family would go through difficult times, but they had two sources of comfort – their horses and St Columba's Hospice.

Robert, 48, had suffered for many years with a condition called chondromalacia, which severely weakens the knees.

Tina's mum Sylvia remembers the February day that the former security guard stumbled back into his armchair while getting up and went to the ERI with a suspected broken hip. Things were worse than that, though – he also had a tumour at the top of his leg.

A further scan revealed cancer on his right lung, but doctors thought they could remove the tumour on his leg with a hip replacement, and control the lung cancer with chemotherapy.

Then Robert had a brain scan, which revealed devastating news – he also had an incurable brain tumour. Sylvia says: "There wasn't much on the lung, so they obviously had a positive outlook on it that he was going to be all right, so the shock did come when they said there was a tumour in the brain and there was nothing they could do.

"It was just devastation – and knowing we had to come home and tell the kids."

No sooner had they broken the news, Tina found the bullying worsened. She was threatened over Bebo and MSN until, her confidence in tatters, Sylvia removed her from school to be educated at home.

In the midst of the misery, the family were buoyed by their beloved horses. Sylvia had ridden as a child and had longed for a horse of her own, and when Robert inherited some money, he pledged to buy her one. She says: "The joke was because I'd ridden a lot, I could get any kind of horse but he wanted one with big hairy feet."

The first horse they went to see was a Clydesdale called Cherry, with hairy feet the size of dinner plates – but it was Sylvia who fell for her. "I just saw the big face looking out the stable door and Robert said 'You're in love with that horse, aren't you'? so I ended up with the one with the biggest feet," she laughs.

Robert bought himself an Irish sports horse called Riley, feisty and loyal.

As his condition worsened, the thought of his faithful horse kept him going. Sylvia says: "Even once he broke his hip, he was adamant that he would keep Riley on – he said he wouldn't give up on the horse. The horse knew there was something wrong. Robert couldn't walk as fast, he did have a limp and went up when he had crutches and the horse kept at his side, the horse walked beside him all the time."

Robert started chemo, but began to get headaches and grew steadily weaker until he was bedridden and on constant morphine. He had never liked hospitals, and so initially refused when a district nurse suggested he should spend some time at St Columba's. Sylvia says: "It was that stumbling block that everybody has, that a hospice is a place to die and he wasn't ready to give up."

He was persuaded, but by the time he was admitted he was becoming confused. With help from the palliative care staff he rebounded. Sylvia says: "He was on something like 32 tablets a day and they managed to cut him down to about eight tablets. He could walk about and he was helping the other patients.

"Once he did go in, he looked on it as a holiday. It's such a tranquil place. He was in for pain relief and he came out a much happier person for it, much more relaxed."

He returned home two weeks later, one of 40 per cent of patients admitted to St Columba's who are discharged.

One night, three weeks later, he grew sicker and began shaking uncontrollably. He was admitted again to the ERI and diagnosed with a chest infection. After a battery of tests, nurses settled him on a ward and suggested Sylvia nip downstairs for a break. She says: "We went down to the cafe and had a cigarette and a nurse said: 'He's getting a bit agitated, he's looking for you'. We went in to see him and I spoke to him and let him know I was there – and he took a gasp of breath and he died. Now I feel as if he was struggling to hold on until he knew that we would be back and once he knew that we were there, he was obviously happy to go."

Throughout it all, the horses have given them strength, she says.

After he died, they said goodbye to Riley to buy Tina her first horse, Lurcher.

With the new confidence she found while riding, the teenager landed a part-time job at Lasswade Riding School, restoring her self-esteem further. On 31 August, the second anniversary of Robert's death, mother and daughter set off on a sponsored ride to raise funds for the hospice. Over four days they raised 800, taking it in turns to ride Cherry from their Musselburgh home to Lanark.

Despite marrying her boyfriend Ross last year, at the heart of the family is her beloved Cherry: "It's always there that if it wasn't for Robert I wouldn't have her, and I'd never part from her. I know it's stupid, but she is one in a million."