Inspiring vow of mother with terminal cancer who had surgery cancelled by pandemic

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Beth Purvis has prepared for this Christmas with the kind of military planning that many mothers employ.

Perfect presents for her two children have been sourced. Festive traditions — in her family’s case, a table called the Christmas Fair, piled high with everyone’s favourite sweets and chocolates, laid out at the start of December but strictly not to be touched until Christmas Day — have been faithfully observed, to the delight of her husband Richard, 49, son Joseph, 12, and daughter Abi, ten.

But this year, Beth has been more organised than ever. She has even created a master spreadsheet of every element of her preparations, right down to the treats used for The Christmas Fair (Toblerone and Turkish delight, among others), as a kind of reference guide to the perfect Purvis family Christmas.

Why is she bothering to be so meticulous? The reason is that Beth has terminal cancer and this Christmas, the doctors have said, is likely to be her last.

‘Everything is itemised on this spreadsheet I’ve made for Richard, so he knows exactly what to buy,’ she says quietly. ‘Next Christmas is going to be hard enough for him without worrying about what to get. ‘No one can imagine being in this situation. Even I can’t really get my head round it. All I know is that nothing — not cancer, not anything — is going to spoil our family Christmas.

‘If this is going to be my last Christmas, I’ll make absolutely sure it’s the happiest ever. I want the children to look back only with joy.’

Her resolve is all the more heartbreaking because Beth, who has advanced bowel cancer, is one of the thousands of hidden victims of coronavirus. It is even possible that, but for Covid, she and her family would not be facing the unthinkable.

Scheduled surgery which she says could have been a lifeline was cancelled as hospitals got ready to receive Covid patients.

‘I was due to have surgery in March,’ says Beth, who lives with Richard, a painter and decorator, in Bishop’s Stortford, Hertfordshire. 

‘I’ll never know whether that operation could have saved my life. But there is absolutely no point in looking back.’ 

Beth was just 34 when her symptoms — constipation, diarrhoea and bleeding — began to appear in April 2014. Misled by the fact that she was so young, her GP diagnosed irritable bowel syndrome.

It was only when, two years later, Beth felt a bulge protruding from her back passage that she was sent for tests. Cancer was diagnosed.

‘I thought until then that I had it all — a wonderful husband I’d been married to since 2007, two gorgeous children and a great career,’ she says.

‘After working in the City as a personal assistant, I took a law degree with the Open University, studying when the children were asleep. I was midway through training to be a chartered legal executive when I was diagnosed. All my plans went up in smoke.’

Beth’s cancer was graded stage 3, as it had already spread to surrounding lymph nodes. And despite surgery and chemotherapy, in November 2017 a scan showed cancerous growths had appeared on both her lungs. ‘That’s when I knew this was more than a bump in the road,’ says Beth. ‘It was incurable.’

Yet the chemotherapy and surgery bought her valuable time.

She had been in remission for 14 months when a new tumour was found in her right lung in January.

But as hospitals prepared to receive Covid patients, Beth’s surgery was summarily cancelled and she was offered radiotherapy at London’s Royal Marsden Hospital. However, this didn’t start until May.

On June 1, halfway through the treatment, Beth began suffering excruciating headaches. She was in such pain that Richard rushed her to A&E at Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge, where a CT scan showed the cancer had spread to her brain.

Covid restrictions meant Richard was not even there to comfort her when doctors broke the news, but sitting in the car park with Abi — who was too young to be left home alone — trying to remain calm for her sake.

‘It was hard to hear but it wasn’t a terrible shock,’ says Beth, who refuses to be self-pitying or bitter. ‘I knew that was a possibility.’

Doctors at the Royal Marsden later confirmed she had four large tumours and numerous small ones in her brain. When Beth asked how long she had, the answer was: at most 12 months, at worst three.

That was in June. Now the clock is relentlessly ticking. ‘I have to be realistic and accept that my time is very limited,’ says Beth.

‘I understand why the doctors made their decision back in March. However, it’s important that people know the implications have been profound for me and for so many others with cancer.’

Beth’s thoughts are echoed by cancer specialists, who have been vociferous about their fears regarding the impact Covid is having on diagnosis and treatment. Macmillan Cancer Support believes 50,000 people in the UK are living with undiagnosed cancer, which could rise to 100,000 by next October.

Genevieve Edwards, the chief executive at Bowel Cancer UK, says: ‘Many people, like Beth, have had bowel cancer treatment postponed or cancelled due to the Covid-19 crisis and they sadly risk suffering worse outcomes as a direct result.

‘Screening and tests which can confirm bowel cancer have also been delayed, increasing the chances of a later diagnosis when the disease is more difficult to treat.

‘We’re pleased the NHS is beginning to get back on its feet, but full recovery of cancer services needs to happen faster to avoid the tragedy of more years of life being lost.’

Beth is now receiving immunotherapy, which targets cancer cells in a similar way to chemotherapy but with fewer unpleasant side-effects.

‘I’ve got an acne-like rash on my face, and my hands and feet are terribly dry. But otherwise I’m doing really well,’ she says.

And thoughtfully, compassionately, as well as doing everything she can to make the most of her time left, Beth is preparing her young family for a life without her.

‘We have always been completely honest with the children,’ she says. ‘They know the doctors can’t cure me. I have told them I might not be here next Christmas.

‘They don’t cry but they give me extra hugs. They understand on one level. But on another, it’s impossible to imagine your mum not being here.’

That is why she is trying to make sure the handover to her husband is as seamless as possible.

‘Richard has always been a hands-on dad but, even so, there are little traditions that pass him by,’ she says. ‘We have an artificial tree which we decorate together the first weekend of December. The kids take it in turns to put the star on top.

‘This year, it was Abi’s turn. She turned to her dad and said: “Don’t forget it will be Joseph next year.” It was so matter-of-fact I’m not sure she was thinking Dad will have to know that because Mum won’t be here.

‘It was hard to hear. But I’m also pleased to know that these traditions will go on.’

Some parents would be tempted to spoil their children with an extravaganza of present-buying but there is little extravagance in Beth’s preparations — the emphasis is more on familiar comforts. ‘All Joseph has asked for is a box of Lindor chocolates, which will hardly break the bank. And Abi wants bath gel,’ says Beth.

They have never been particularly greedy. But I think the truth is that, in our separate ways, we all know we are building memories.

‘It’s not the presents. It is being together, laughing and having fun that matters.

‘We will go ice-skating and take a trip to London to see the Christmas lights — lovely, normal things that don’t cost a bomb.’

If this were a normal Christmas, Beth would be enjoying family parties, with everyone from babies to nonagenarians.

The eldest of four children, she has a 39-year-old sister, Laragh, who is a chartered accountant and mother of two, and brothers Ian, 36, who owns a lettings agency, and Henry, 31, a doctor.

‘We are very close and as Mum and Dad live 30 minutes away, everything still centres on their home,’ she says. ‘There won’t be the usual big parties but we will see everyone we love.’ So will she feel melancholy on December 25?

‘I don’t think Christmas will make me sad, because no matter how much I know rationally that this is likely to be my last Christmas, I can’t really visualise the future. So I just live each day as it comes.’

Yet in truth, she is carefully contemplating every aspect of her children’s lives, trying to make it easier for them and Richard. At times, her tenderness is hard to listen to.

‘I tend to remind the children, when they talk about the future, that I might not be here,’ she says. ‘I want to normalise it for them and remind them that, much as they love me, I am not indispensable. There are other people they can go to for certain things.’

She gives an example: ‘Abi loves the reality show Say Yes To The Dress, which is all about brides looking for the perfect dress. Snuggling on the sofa together to watch it is our girlie treat.

‘Last week it showed a bride going into the shop with her mum. I asked Abi who she would take with her if she couldn’t have me. She chose her auntie Laragh.

‘Of course I want to be there. But realistically, I know I will be lucky if I even see her into secondary school in September.

‘And I actually find it very comforting to know that my sister, who I love to bits, will be there for Abi.’ Amid the present-gathering, she is also busy making memory boxes packed with mementoes, as well as writing a book in which she answers questions the children might have for her in future — such as where she went on holiday as a child (‘Frinton for two weeks every year. No swimming pool, nothing, but it was heaven’).

Yet, ever sensitive, she doesn’t want to presume too much about their futures. Some dying parents write their children letters to be opened on special occasions such as weddings and graduations, but Beth has decided against doing that.

‘I can’t see how the future will map out for them,’ she says. ‘I don’t want them ever to feel they have disappointed me by not marrying or going to university.’

But she has written them a card for each birthday until they are 21, and has bought them presents to open on their 18th and 21st birthdays: a bracelet each, engraved ‘Happy 18th from Mum’, and a watch for their 21st.

Few wives would manage the kind of selflessness Beth shows when she describes the gifts. ‘They are very specifically just from me, not from their dad,’ she says. ‘After all, by then he may have a new partner and want to do things differently with his own gift.’

Beth has also recorded a video on her phone for both children. ‘I wanted to try to tell them what sort of person I was and that they should never put me on a pedestal,’ she says.

‘I wanted them to know I was human, too, and whatever mistakes they make in life, I also made them and would never judge them.’

And when her favourite moment comes late on Christmas Eve, when she creeps into her sleeping children’s bedrooms to lay a filled stocking at the end of each bed, she is determined it will be with a lifetime’s worth of joy in her heart.

‘This has made me realise how lucky I’ve been in so many ways,’ she says. ‘I’ve been blessed.’