Seaford College DW 2020 for Daisy Strange

Over the 4-day Easter weekend, a group of Seaford students will take part in the Devizes to Westminster international canoe race (DW); a gruelling 125-mile race in 2-man kayaks with 77 portages – known as the ‘Canoeist’s Everest’.

To reach the start line will be a phenomenal achievement but, this year, it is being done to raise much needed funds for a much loved Seaford teacher and DW supporter…Daisy Strange

This challenge of around ¼ million paddle strokes and a half marathon with a boat on your shoulders will take around 24 hours from the start in Wiltshire to the finish opposite the Houses of Parliament in Central London. During the training, the Seaford students will have to learn to both balance and paddle the highly unstable racing kayaks and over the 8 preceding Sundays, race over varying distances and unforgiving parts of the course in all weather conditions – wind, rain, snow and sun.

This remarkable young and talented lady has, in previous years, quietly (and without asking) dedicated her free time to past Seaford DW students. This year, however, she is facing her own enormous challenge and biggest commitment and all the Seaford paddlers are focussed on returning the favour to help Daisy and her wonderful family raise much needed funds.

This is Daisy’s very own, heart rendering story…

Daisy, a competitive & highly successful sportswoman who has played hockey at national level, started her teaching career at Seaford and has become a respected member of the PE staff and a much-loved tutor in the prep school.

After many of months of pain, a number of doctors’ visits and with normal everyday tasks becoming increasingly difficult, Daisy was eventually admitted to St Richards and put on a feeding tube and sent for more Biopsies, a CT scan and an MRI; on the 12 October Daisy Strange was diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer of the tongue.

Daisy was referred to the Royal Marsden, London where, on 16 November, she underwent 16 hours of extensive surgery – her neck was dissected and all lymph nodes were removed, her jaw was broken and most of her tongue was removed and replaced with skin from her thigh and had a tracheotomy to help her breathe. When removing the tumour, the surgeons needed to remove a clear margin of around 1cm each side to make sure they had all the cells; the tumour they removed was the size of a mandarin and had become incredibly toxic and although they were able to remove the tumour, they were unable to get the clear margins they were hoping for and the cancer had spread to both the left and right.

It is a very aggressive cancer and Daisy is in the unlucky 2% of non smokers to get this type of cancer (proving it can happen to anyone). Daisy’s recovery began to improve once the tubes and drains started to be removed, however, she struggled to speak, swallow or do anything without help

In December, Daisy harvested her eggs and she is now undergoing  6 cycles of EXTREME chemotherapy to target the cells on both the sides of her neck and mouth. This will set back any progress she has made so far with her speaking and swallowing. Daisy is fed through a tube into her stomach which helps her get the correct amount of nutrition during this tough process. She is very sick during each treatment so it’s hard for her to maintain her weight.

We are hoping that Daisy’s chemotherapy will be successful, where she will then follow on with Immunology therapy. Daisy will have speech and language therapy to help her with her speech and eat again; she will also be using alternative medicines, including Oxygen, Vitamin C, Reflexology and Acupuncture which along with the regular trips and parking costs for treatment, consultations and check-ups all need to be funded privately.

All the paddlers know that whilst their own DW challenge will be gruelling, tough, painful and hard work, it will be small in comparison to Daisy’s life changing challenge. The DW paddlers are committed to raising as much money as possible for this remarkable, fun loving, strong and selfless young lady to help towards the funding of her treatments and, with any money left over, to fulfil Daisy’s dream…to raise awareness and enable others to be diagnosed earlier and help more families like Daisy’s through funding clinical trials to bring about breakthroughs in cancer treatment.