The Final Diary Entry
From 1,000 steps overnight to approx 140,000 steps in day
It started right here.
On the 10th of January 2025, three days before my surgery, I wrote my first entry on this Substack. You can still read it here: The Day Everything Changed.
I wasn’t sure what I was doing or why. My friend Lucy had suggested journaling as a way to claw back some control. I’d been in a personal hell since November, and I needed somewhere to put it all.
I told Emma I was journaling and asked if she thought sharing it could help someone else. ‘Yes, go for it,’ was her response. So, with her support, I did.
Those journals became the ‘OH SH!T’ series of books, supporting Bowel Cancer UK, and it’s thanks to each of you that it happened.
This week, those journals ended, no more diary entries. In all honesty, that makes me sad. Part 3 is written and submitted to the publisher, ready to be copy-edited, reviewed and hopefully released in the next few months.
This time last week, I had no idea how the diaries would end.
But now I do, and I think you’d like to know the ending too?
First, a flashback.
Surgery day. 13th of January 2025. Emma’s birthday, of all days.
14th of January 2025, Emma came to see me, followed by my Dad, who had done the nearly 500-mile round trip. I was on morphine, farting like a beast, and finally getting around to going for a pee in a cardboard tube, so dignified.
After they left, I dragged my dead leg out of bed and set of, drip in tow up and down a hospital corridor.
About 1,000 steps. That was everything I had, and at the time, it felt like a marathon.
That night, I told myself I’d get back to running, to beating my previous distance of 50km.
Much of what followed was documented here, in these entries, before it became the OH SH!T series of books.
The diagnosis. The surgery. The strange dark humour of recovery. Then chemotherapy, which, if I’m honest, was harder. The fizzing limbs. The cold aversion. The fog. The Aperol Shitz.
The days when I genuinely wondered if I’d ever feel like myself again.
But in between all of that, and I mean this, there was this community. People reaching out. Sharing their own stories. Offering advice, kindness, and the occasional reality check when I needed one.
Fast forward sixteen months
Last Saturday, my mate Wayne and I arrived at the start line of the Isle of Wight Ultra Challenge.
107.85 kilometres around the entire island. We’d trained for months, 900 kilometres each, and we carried copies of the books across the finish line at almost 3:30 am, medals around our necks, feet absolutely destroyed, grinning like idiots.
In my case, I was almost as high as the 14th January 2025 when I was smashing the morphine button.
1,000 steps to approx 140,000 steps in a single day. Sixteen months apart.
Don’t call it a comeback, it’s not that, but in an exclusive reveal, this is planned to be the subtitle for Part 3 of the OH SH!T diaries.
Why? I love a lyric and what a start to a song, and I’ve never liked ‘comeback’.
It’s a rebuild. Messy, full of rest weeks and zero weeks and weeks where life and Guinness just got in the way. But it happened. We got there.
And it all started here, three days before they wheeled me into surgery, when I just needed somewhere honest to put my fear.
Thank you for being that place. It means more than I can properly say.
— Dar 🏅(here’s how it ended).
Wayne and I are still fundraising; every penny counts. £3545 so far!
The OH SH!T diaries — Parts 1 and 2 are available now. Part 3 will cover the mental impact of leaving care, the rebuild, the ultra, and everything in between.
A portion of profits goes to Bowel Cancer UK.
Available in all good bookstores and via OH SH!T I've got Bowel Cancer
So proud of you Son!