Savour life with

Stevendies weeks after shocking diagnosis

survival mode for us, to make sure we were all going to be okay.”

Four years previously, Steven had become one of the first farmers in Scotland to decide to fool-proof the family’s farm in Thornhill by heavily investing in two Fullwood Merlin milking robots.

Gregor, then aged 23, picked up the gauntlet as his father’s condition rapidly deteriorated, and the state-of-the-art machinery allowed the family to continue to milk the farm’s herd. The technology in which they’d invested, says Pam, was to be their saving grace.

“Steven was very fit. Although he played five-a-side football, he didn’t have a lot of time for hobbies. He worked so hard on the farm,” continued Pam, 58.

“He loved what he did. He loved his cows and he loved working on the land. He loved springtime, when he got out with the plough to sow his spring barley and oats.”

Courageously accepting that he was approaching the end of his life, Steven – together with Pam and their brotherin-law, Neil – compiled an allyear-round spreadsheet of the farm’s demands, to ensure that everything would be tended to during every season when he was no longer there to oversee it himself.

“They gave me a crash-course on how to register calves,” said Pam, who is responsible for rearing the dairy farm’s young.

“Steven spent his last few weeks making sure he covered everything for us. I did not know how he had the strength to do that. It was his way of coping. Looking back, it was a bit surreal.”

By the end of January, 2020, the pain from Steven’s tumour was becoming overwhelming.

When Pam took him for a short drive in the countryside, the agony he experienced from a bump on the road or the mere tension of his seatbelt was unbearable. Within a matter of days, he was confined to bed.

At 1.45am on Sunday, February 2, 2020, much-loved Steven passed away at home in Thornhill.

Now, Pam is choosing to tell her family’s story as a way of raising awareness of the lesser-known, fast-spreading cancer of the duadenum, and of the incredible work of The Beatson.