"Fat to Fittie"

The word inspirational is often overused, but sometimes, it’s the only way to describe a person. I’m proud to call the lady I’m writing about a friend and I know she’ll be embarrassed, but I’m afraid she’s going to have to get used to people praising her. In 2017 Dee Cooper was a woman with a young family, who had no more worries than most of us, that was until she was diagnosed with cancer and had to have a leg amputated to save her life. Speaking to me last week on my latest podcast, she talked about the depression she ended up going through, despite thinking she was handling everything well. Over the last twelve months, Dee has gone through every emotion possible and come out with a truly fantastic goal. She locked her electric wheelchair in the shed and started training on a self propelled one, looking at taking on the 10k challenge, “race for life” in order to raise funds for a children’s cancer charity.

I was once recommended by a friend to have a go at using a wheelchair to get around, this was in 2019, before covid (1BC) and at the time, thought it might be a good idea. Instead of taking the car on short journeys, I could pop to the shops in the chair, it’d help me keep fit and hopefully go a long way to assisting with the weight loss that would lead to the operation and replace my hips, what could go wrong? I managed to hire one from the Red Cross for six weeks, though because I was a bit more overweight then than I am now, I had to get fat bastard size, which of course made the chair a bit heavier. The first time I used it was to go swimming, a journey that someone could walk in five minutes, but actually took me nearly 15, mostly cos I struggled to get up and down the slopes and had to correct myself after coming off the kerb a couple of times. I won’t lie, when I got to the baths, I was absolutely knackered, the sweat was dripping off me and I felt in no mood for getting a coffee from the machine, let alone swimming a few lengths.

I tell you this in the hope that you realise how hard it is for someone to get around in a wheelchair by themself, especially if a bit overweight and unfit, let alone adding a loss of a leg to the list. Dee was all of these, yet she pushed through and despite most of the course been on grass, she finished, albeit, with a little help from her friends. I strongly advise you listen to my latest podcast “Marathon Woman” to hear exactly what happened, but the outcome is, she’s now going to take part in next years London Marathon. I don’t need to tell you how big this is and how much work she’s going to have to put in to achieve it. In the show notes for my podcast, there’s a link to a donations page for the children’s charity, I’m asking, please, go and look at it, contribute, just a small amount and help not only those children that this wonderful charity supports, but also give Dee the extra boost she needs next April. My final word goes to anyone who thinks there is no light at the end of the tunnel, you now know that there are people like you and no matter what shit is going on in your life, you can!