Tudor's Story

My name is Tudor Morris and when I was 13 years old I was diagnosed with stage 3 non-hodgkinsons lymphoma, a type of cancer that affects the immune system and lymphatic glands where white blood cells are produced. By the time I started treatment the cancer had spread and I had tumors on both sides of my neck, and more alarmingly, close to my heart and lungs.

“The big C” had always been a word that scared me – my late mother sadly passed away when I was 6 years old, and knowing that when I had it reminded me of its potency – not just to individuals, but to families.

Despite my rather dire condition I went through several years of fairly intensive chemotherapy, minor and major surgeries, and a whole cocktail of different drugs and pills.

I moved to and fro between the Royal Marsden and Kingston Hospital, where Momentum had only really just started.

One of the worst things was being in containment – when your immune system is so low that you could be put at risk from a minor infection, you are essentially put in a sanitised room until your bloods improve. You can be in there for weeks on end without really being able to leave one room, or the relative ‘infection safe’ zone safety of the hospital ward. Of course, family and friends are allowed to visit, but only if they aren’t ill themselves.

Momentum were able to provide me with all sorts of entertainment when I was at Kingston – I could request pretty much anything (within reason, of course) and spent hours watching Simpsons DVDs and reading books when I wasn’t sleeping… or doing schoolwork (cough).

That was around 6 years ago now, and luckily I stand before you cancer free having beaten the disease that my mother sadly succumbed to all those years ago. Momentum has changed vastly since then – when I was at Kingston, it was a very small charity, but with generous donations from the public it has grown – that video showed some good examples of the work they do now, and the help they give to families with children affected by cancer.

Naturally, I wanted to give something back to Momentum – for what they did for me, and the massive amount of support that they continue to give today. In July 2010, me and a group of friends embarked on an adventure cycle ride from John ‘O Groats at the top of Scotland, south (the wrong way to do it, I can tell you that now!) to Lands End in Cornwall, covering approximately 1000 miles in 9 days. Thanks to the generous support of the public and our official sponsors, we raised a hefty £11,000 for Momentum.

But then I thought to myself “well, why stop there?”. I had cycled Britain and now my appetite for adventure has grown bigger, me and my friend Pavle have decided that we’ll be swimming from England to France in August 2012.

We don’t do things by half, do we?

Yes, the challenge to swim the channel was something that I had wanted to accomplish after reading about a morbidly obese woman who took up swimming as a hobby, and ended up doing the ultimate swim herself, albeit in the slowest time recorded. I thought that if she could do it then so could I, figuring that it wasn’t the time that mattered, it was the accomplishing of the endurance feat itself.

Along the way we will be swimming in 15 degree water (thankfully that’s in celsius!), and will be following the rules set by the Channel Swimming Association – that being, no wetsuits, no stopping, no getting out, no touching the boat. Coated in a protective layer of grease and armed only with out skimpy tight fitting swimsuits, goggles and swim hats, we will be battling obstacles such as floating debris, sewage, jellyfish and 500 ton freight cargo boats.

Pavle and I plan to do the whole swim side by side, followed by a support boat that will be throwing food, energy drinks (and hopefully champagne, although most of that should be saved till the end).

Training for this is going to be fairly intense, which is why the date for our actual swim is a good while away. This will give us plenty of opportunity to build on our endurance, as well as acclimatize to cold water and open water training. It also ensures that plenty of time can be spent at fast food outlets consuming endless amounts of greasy food without guilt in order to put on the recommended 1-2 stone for insulation. The last part of the training seems the most fun.

It’s worthwhile noting at this point that swimming the channel is considered to be the absolute ultimate test of endurance, strength and stamina. More people have climbed Mt. Everest than have done the swim, and only 10% of people who set out to do it actually accomplish the task, the main reason for this is due to hypothermia.