'Tears rolling down my face': Sir Chris Hoy recalls the moment wife Sarra told him she had aggressive MS
Sir Chris Hoy has paid tribute to his wife Sarra as the "epitome of selflessness" in supporting him through treatment for terminal cancer as she battles aggressive multiple sclerosis (MS).
The six-time Olympic champion said his initial reaction to their diagnoses was "almost like a drowning sensation" it was "so much to bear".
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Hide AdBut in an extract from his coming book, published in The Sunday Times a week after he revealed his terminal cancer, Sir Chris said he reminded himself not to think "why me?" but "why not me?”
He wrote: “This is just life, it happens to countless other people around the world, so why wouldn’t it be the same for me and my family?”
In the book, All That Matters: My Toughest Race Yet, to be published on November 7, Sir Chris recalled he had dared not look at the scan of his tumour when a doctor told him he had terminal cancer.
He said: “I don’t want to look at it, as though laying my eyes on it might make it more real and horrific than it already is.
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Hide Ad“I turn away, not quite willing to accept this news just yet. How can I? It’s beyond comprehension.
“Hearing the word ‘cancer’ has had an immediate and profound effect on me, and not just me. Next to the doctor, the nurse’s eyes fill with tears.
“In one short moment, life has changed irrevocably. All I can see in these early moments is this damning diagnosis, its finality.”
However, Sir Chris said his wife was had stressed the positive. He said: “Sarra is more upbeat. She hangs onto the words ‘years and years’ and keeps repeating them to me.”
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Hide AdBut Sir Chris then related that Sarra was to go on to have an MRI scan, that was to lead to her MS diagnosis, just a week later.
She had felt tingling in her face and tongue the previous summer, but a GP was not concerned and referred her for the scan to follow protocol.
He said: “She went off to the scan, saying it would be a chance for her to have a lie down for an hour, joking it was as close to a spa day as she’d get.
“Afterwards, she continued to support me wholly and completely, leading me to push all thoughts of her MRI scan away, given her symptoms had long since disappeared.”
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Hide AdHowever, more than a month later, his wife had told him the devastating news.
He said one night last December, “Sarra looked serious and said she had something to tell me. I realised immediately it was something big as Sarra, always so strong in every situation, was beginning to crumble and struggling to get the words out.
“’Do you remember that scan I went for?’ she started through tear-filled eyes. ‘Well, they think it might be multiple sclerosis’. I immediately broke down, distraught both by the news and the fact she’d received it without me there.
“It was so hard to try to compute that she had absorbed the awfulness of this diagnosis alone, without sharing it with me, in order to protect me.
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Hide Ad“I tried to let the words sink in as my mind was spinning, trying to understand what had been happening to her, all while she had been accompanying me to every one of my own hospital appointments.
“I couldn’t believe what I was hearing; Sarra, so fit and well, able and healthy, was facing this absolute crisis in the midst of my own.”
As Christmas approached, things took a further grim turn when his wife received an update from her consultant.
Sir Chris wrote: “The latest scan had been worse and confirmed Sarra had very active and aggressive MS, and she needed treatment very quickly.
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Hide Ad“I sat with tears rolling down my face as I listened to Sarra calmly telling the doctor that her husband had recently been diagnosed with stage four cancer and simply saying ‘I need you to help me outrun this’.”
Sir Chris said there were days when she was “absolutely fine”, but others when she struggled with pains in her arms and hands. The condition has forced her to stop work as deputy director of a branch of the Samaritans.
He wrote: “Her work has been completely put on the back burner. She is the epitome of selflessness, putting the kids and me before herself and always doing it through love not obligation. The future is a great unknown for us both now.”
But Sir Chris praised his wife’s outlook. He said: “Sarra has found a characteristically courageous way to frame our situation, something we both come back to and feel grounded by.
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Hide Ad“She reminds me ‘aren’t we lucky?’ Lucky to both be diagnosed with conditions they have medicines and treatments for. Aren’t we lucky that science is ahead of us?.
“That’s what we choose to focus on, rather than asking ‘why we can’t be cured’. When things feel a bit unfair, I remind myself not to think ‘why me?’ but instead ‘why not me?’.
“This is just life, it happens to countless other people around the world, so why wouldn’t it be the same for me and my family?
“There are still dark moments when the emotions flood in and everything becomes too much. Almost always, that overwhelming sense of emotion involves either thoughts of or talking about Sarra and the kids.
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Hide Ad“In the early days, it was almost like a drowning sensation: it was so much to bear. Now when it hits me I am able to bounce back quickly, always with the same message from Sarra in my head: ‘Not now’.
“And she’s right. None of us can outrun death and time, try as we might. I’d rather live a life full of the things I hold dear, albeit a little shorter than I hoped.”
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