Why Ruddi’s Retreat is a holiday lifeline for cancer sufferers
When Ali Waterworth’s son Ruddi was diagnosed with cancer, she was moved to start a charity giving a much-needed break to other families also going through tough times
Ruddi Waterworth-Jones may look like your average 11-year-old with his cheeky grin and overwhelming fondness for chocolate, but this happy little man is actually the inspiration behind an amazing charity, run by his mum, Ali, that’s now making a difference to hundreds of families around the UK.
It all started when Ruddi became poorly at about six months old. Thinking at first that it was just a common childhood illness, or even teething, Ali took her little boy to the doctor who assured her it was nothing to worry about. But Ruddi continued to be unwell until one night Ali had a gut feeling that something was seriously wrong so took her baby straight to A&E.
From that night, the family wouldn’t leave the hospital again for 14 weeks as tests revealed he had a mass on his bladder. It was every parent’s worst nightmare as Ruddi was prodded and poked and the doctors told the family that he had a rare form of cancer. “Everything just stopped,” says Ali.
Gruelling rounds of chemotherapy followed, causing Ruddi’s liver to fail over Easter that year. Ali and her family were told to brace themselves for the worst, until on Easter Sunday Ruddi mercifully opened his eyes. After that, more chemotherapy and surgery
followed, as well as a trip to America for Ruddi to have proton therapy. It was a punishing process that left the whole family exhausted. So when Leeds-based charity Candlelighters offered the family a free caravan break at the seaside, they couldn’t have been more grateful.
“It was such a priceless experience to get out of a hospital environment and just spend time together as a family,” says Ali. Having been told Ruddi would never walk, the caravan was actually the place where he took his first steps. “I left feeling totally different to how I’d done when we arrived.”
Sadly, after that happy trip, Ruddi fell ill again, kickstarting another endless schedule of hospital visits, as a result of which Ali lost her job and eventually her home.
It was a desperate situation but as Ruddi at last started to get better, Ali kept thinking back to that holiday the family had enjoyed. “I thought, I can either get back in the rat race or I can do something to help others,” she says. And Ali’s idea was that she could give families the much-needed relief of a free holiday that had once helped her.
So Ruddi’s Retreat was born and today the charity has four caravans at Primrose Valley, near Filey, in Yorkshire, which gives a free holiday to as many as 200 families a year. The majority of the families who come here have been affected by childhood illness. Some come in the midst of treatment when everyone just needs a break, while others come after the tragic passing of a child to scatter ashes and come to terms with their grief.
As every family can have up to three holidays with the charity, staying up to a week in the caravan or four days during the school summer holidays, it’s a chance for everyone to be together and make memories.
Ali says: “Many families say they can’t believe what a change it made to them getting away from hospitals. One family, who had sadly lost their little girl and then their little boy got cancer, said that coming to the caravan was an amazing experience.”
As well as helping families with sick children, Ruddi’s Retreat has now started a project helping families affected by dementia. “I lost my grandma to dementia so I wanted to do something to help,” says Ali.
Again, the benefits to these families has been incredible, especially as Filey is an old town full of old-fashioned shops that can help people with dementia reminisce about old times. It’s a chance for families to make new memories at a time when old ones are perhaps slipping away,” says Ali.
Many of the families helped by Ruddi’s Retreat have since become volunteers, helping maintain the caravans or run the charity’s tea shop in Huddersfield to raise vital funds.
But of course one of the biggest champions of the charity is Ruddi himself, who loves to share his story. While he is now cancer-free, he has been left with a number of complications including rickets and kidney damage which has affected his bone growth. He will have to be on medication for the rest of his life, but he takes it all in his stride with a great big grin.
“Ruddi loves that so much good has been done off the back of what happened to him and he wants to work for the charity when he gets older,” says Ali.
“For me, it just makes me so proud to think that out of something so terrible – where we had no idea how we were going to get ourselves out of this tunnel – we’ve been able to come out the other side and help other people. There really is no feeling like it.”
‘I’m proud that out of something so terrible, we’ve been able to help others’