It should have been the most wonderful time of our lives
Michael Monk was told he had cancer just weeks before becoming a dad. He and his wife Lauren talk to Rosa Silverman about their fight to fund his treatment
‘My wife is going on maternity leave tomorrow. I can’t tell her this.” At 38 years old, Michael Monk was about to become a father for the first time when a doctor delivered the shock diagnosis: he had stage four bowel cancer that had spread to his liver. To have to tell his wife, Lauren, would have been painful at any time. Telling her when her due date was weeks away felt impossible – and Michael’s words to the doctor conveyed as much.
“He said, ‘I’m afraid you’re going to have to [tell her]’,” recalls Michael, now 39. “‘This is quite serious’.”
Needless to say, this nightmarish turn of events was not how the couple had foreseen their life together panning out. After meeting at a party on the day of the royal wedding in 2011, Michael, originally from Surrey, a content marketing manager for a financial services compensation scheme, and Lauren, from Hertfordshire, had moved in together a few years later and got married in 2016. Starting a family had been part of the plan, and when Lauren, the publisher of Grazia magazine, got pregnant they decided to enjoy some holidays as a couple before the baby arrived. It was during a trip to Italy that Michael first noticed a problem.
“I was finding some discomfort in my stomach and finding it a bit difficult to breathe fully when I was going to bed and lying down,” he says. “It was just a little thing to start with and I would sit on the edge of the bed and think, ‘oh, I’ve got this twinge, it feels like something’s going to burst’.”
On his return, he had an ultrasound scan and gallstones were initially suspected. “I thought, ‘oh, great timing when we’re about to have a baby’,” he says.
Further tests and consultations followed, ultimately leading to the bombshell diagnosis
just as the couple were readying themselves for parenthood. Michael had a rare form of bowel cancer, with limited treatment options, which had already spread. He was given between 12 and 19 months to live.
Few would expect to face such a prognosis in their 30s. But bowel cancer in younger adults is on the rise, according to new figures. Research published earlier this month found that while incidence of the disease is falling among older age groups – who are invited to NHS checks every two years – it is increasing among the under 50s. Medics have called for bowel cancer screening to be introduced at the age of 45. In most areas, it isn’t offered until you reach 60.
Sitting beside her husband on the sofa in their north London home, their daughter’s gentle babbles drifting in from the next room, Lauren, 39, remembers the day their lives were turned upside down. “It had been pretty much my last day of work so we had a send-off and I came home in a taxi with loads of presents and cards and well wishes. I was uncharacteristically positive about Michael’s meeting [at the hospital]. I hadn’t really got it into my mind that it would be anything serious, so I had all the stuff laid out in the kitchen and wanted to get on with being on maternity leave.”
The true nature of Michael’s illness was, she says, “not the news I was expecting. You just can’t really believe it. I still can’t sometimes.”
Michael didn’t even tell her, to begin with, he’d been given up to 19 months maximum. The week before she gave birth, her husband began chemotherapy. Then, four days before his daughter, Margot, was born last September, he was admitted to hospital, suffering a bad reaction to the treatment, and discharged only hours before Lauren went into labour.
‘I can’t think too negatively about what the worst might be because I think miracles happen’
Michael says: “I was so happy to get out of hospital and just to be there, because initially when I was told I had cancer, I thought ‘how long have I got to live? And am I going to die tomorrow or am I going to be there for the birth of my child?’ One of the first goals for me was that I needed to be there for it.”
For Lauren’s part, she has learnt to break down time into small chunks and work towards the next thing. “So in the run-up [to giving birth] it was just that Michael be there, and he was there, so it was like a big tick,” she says.
Her father was also suffering from prostate cancer and the fact that both he and her husband were ill had compounded her fears. “I had a very acute worry there would be something wrong with the baby as well,” she says, choking back tears. “I started to worry that everyone is going to be sick, so when the baby was well and seemed fine that was a relief.”
For the first few weeks of Margot’s life, Michael was having fortnightly chemotherapy. But by his 12th round, his cancer had stopped responding to it. The couple were told there was nothing left to try, but had read about trials of a new treatment called triplet therapy, which had yielded some positive results.
“Some people [on this treatment] had been finding on their scans that the cancer had gone or reduced, or at least [remained] stable, which is the least you would want,” says Michael.
The trials, however, were closed, and since the therapy has not been licensed in the UK, the only way to receive it would be to pay for it themselves, at a cost of around £240,000 a year. It wasn’t a sum the couple could raise on their own. And so, despite their reservations about asking others, they decided to crowdfund.
“We talked about various options and in the end you think ‘if we can buy a year’s worth of treatment, so much might change in that time frame: the drugs might be licensed, Michael’s cancer might reduce enough to get him to surgery or we might be able to raise more money ourselves in different ways’,” says Lauren. “But we felt we had to go for it. We owe it to Margot.”
They set a milestone of getting Michael to Margot’s first birthday. She is eight months old now, and with £200,000 raised so far, he has recently begun the treatment that can offer him the only real hope now. The couple are trying to raise another £100,000 so that, if Michael responds well, he can continue. There are also scans to pay for. In the meantime, they are trying to get on with family life.
“It’s a strange thing,” says Lauren. “You assume when someone has a serious and potentially life-threatening illness it is allconsuming, but when you’re in it we have quite normal days, normal weeks.”
Michael agrees: “Nothing’s changed really, it’s just you’ve got potentially a time bomb ticking.”
How optimistic does he feel, now that he’s started the treatment?
“I’m as hopeful as I’ve always been,” he says. “Apart from being highly anxious at times, I can’t think too negatively about what the worst might be because I think miracles can happen.”
The crowdfunding campaign has also helped, Lauren adds. “The incredibly important byproduct of it is the positivity it has created. You do need to stay positive, and the kindness, generosity and support has helped keep that positivity high for us both.”
To donate to Michael and Lauren’s crowdfunding campaign, visit uk.gofundme.com/team-monk