The Courier & Advertiser (Angus and Dundee)
People like Fi can still inspire even in the bleakest of times
Istruggled with what to write about this week. It’s Saturday, some of us have had a tough time getting here. We’ve all had a long haul and I don’t think it’s really sunk in yet just what a tumult we’ve all lived through these past few months.
Nor has the magnitude of what lies ahead as our focus shifts from the challenge of facing down an urgent health crisis, for which there is still no real defence other than containing the spread of Covid-19, to the looming economic consequences of lockdown.
Someone needs to lead the Saturday cheer squad and yet, despite the reopening of shops, pubs, churches and hair salons and little glimmers – from Captain Tom’s knighthood to footballer and free school meals campaigner Marcus Rashford’s honorary university degree – much of the news this week has been on the bleak and draining side.
There are those economic outlooks – the number of people in work in Scotland fell by 47,000 between March and May and experts fear the end of the furlough scheme in October will send the unemployment rate soaring well above its current 120,000 and into numbers not seen since the 1980s.
Councillors in Angus and Fife met, online of course, on Thursday to discuss coronavirus costs – the eye-watering kind with so many zeros on the end they were all but incomprehensible. I guess we’ll understand better when the cuts to services start happening.
Meanwhile, the courts are filling up again. Someone was charged with attempted murder in Fife and there has been a string of nasty sex attacks there and in Dundee. Police had missiles thrown at them by a vigilante mob in Cowdenbeath. Two people died in a car crash. The River Tay is filling up with litter and people are still mumping about the rights and wrongs of face masks.
Sometimes those hazy days in the early weeks of lockdown when we all got drunk on community spirit and convinced ourselves we’d build a better world in the new normal feel like a fever dream.
And then, as I was getting ready to switch off my laptop on Thursday evening, we got word that a young woman from Perthshire had died following a well-documented four-year treatment for cancer. So I am going to write about her. And strangely, I am sad but not depressed by that topic because her name was Fi Munro and she was amazing.
I never met Fi but like a lot of you, I imagine, I felt as if I knew her because she took the courageous decision to share almost every step of her treatment for the ovarian cancer which spread throughout her body, defying major surgery, chemotherapy and a host of other interventions, while campaigning for recognition for other patients.
She wrote a best-selling book, How Long Have I Got? and continued to work as a researcher and motivational speaker for as long as she was able.
She raised funds for cancer charities and inspired others to follow suit and in her blog, she described the day to day struggle with the disease with a rarelyseen candour.
In her last post on June 14, she writes about waking up mid-vomit – “an all-time cancer low” – and being readmitted to hospital that afternoon as the lows kept coming. It’s raw and sweary and funny and it ends with a plea to “appreciate your precious day”.
“Waking up this morning, being alive is a gift,” she said. “Don’t take it for granted. Tell someone you love them, smile at the sun, laugh, count your blessings and find
something to be grateful for. There is always something.”
Cancer experts tell us not to use the terminology of war when talking of the disease. To say someone has lost their fight is to imply weakness and defeat; if only they had fought harder they might have beaten it. So I try not to.
But Fi Munro battled with everything she had. She did not die because she was weak but because cancer is a ghastly disease, against which we have made great strides in developing therapies and understanding preventative measures; and against which our brightest brains will continue to work to find cures and ways of caring in our newly straitened times.
While receiving treatment, Fi began distributing cash envelopes to strangers, some of whom returned the favour by raising thousands of pounds for cancer charities.
Announcing the 34-year-old’s death on Thursday, her husband Ewan said she had asked that people remember her by passing on their own random acts of kindness in her name so I made a small but heartfelt donation to Maggie’s this morning in memory of Fi Munro and members of my own family who I miss. Tomorrow, I’ll do something else and if the world gets me down again next week I’ll try to remember a remarkable young woman who understood how lucky we are to be here and showed us we could all make it better if we put our minds to it.