Book charts amazing life of adventurer with MS
ACONSULTANT who has had a life full of adventure despite suffering from multiple sclerosis has published his memoirs.
Roger Chisholm, 66, grew up on Legh Road, in Prestbury, where his family moved to in 1958.
His dad Alec lived there until his death three years ago. Roger’s mum Aline taught PE and English at Tytherington School for many years.
He inherited a love of mountaineering from his parents and climbed dangerous routes in Snowdonia, the Scottish Highlands and the Alps while he was an engineering student at St John’s College, Cambridge.
After a short spell working in the City, he returned to Cambridge to train to be a doctor. But in 1977 aged 27 he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis which meant he walked with a stick and lost the use of one of his arms.
But that didn’t stop Roger becoming a consultant radiologist and tackling a range of exciting expeditions.
He has mountaineered in the Austrian Alps, sailed above the Arctic Circle, walked around Annapurna in Nepal, worked as a doctor in northern India and explored the tribal regions of Pakistan.
But then in April this year tragedy struck Roger again, when he was diagnosed with an untreatable brain tumour.
Roger started writing his autobiography and now his memoir has been published, named Don’t Look Down: An Adventurous Life with MS.
Roger, a consultant radiologist at Salford Royal Hospital who now lives in Monton, Manchester, said his passion for the outdoors began in Macclesfield. He started sailing at Redesmere Sailing Club, near Siddington.
He said: “My parents loved climbing and sailing and our house was full of books on both.
“I was hooked on sailing since I mastered the basics at Redesmere. I can still remember cycling there with the sails for the family dinghy in my rucksack.
“When I was told my tumour was inoperable the first thing I did was look on my life and write a book while I could still remember everything.
“I was really angry at first. I was feeling quite suicidal but the book helped me focus on what I have done with my life. And when I look back, it’s all really been quite amazing.”
Don’t Look Down follows the first British screening of a documentary ‘Revisiting the Dubhs Ridge’ about Roger and a friend on a trip to revisit a climb he did as a student.