18:46 is the time taken for a 4-year-old cancer survivor to complete a Parkrun. Mason has just turned 4 years old in January and completing his first Parkrun was so much more than just a run. This is our 23rd blog post and if you have followed the previous 22 you will understand that it's a pretty great achievement for him/us & a testament to all those who have supported him through his cancer journey. Post-treatment he has recovered well, and passed all routine scans. His most recent MRI scan, however, at Christmas revealed he had a collapsed lung, which is something we've monitored close ..read more

It’s been 7 months since our last blog post and that was the fundraiser for LATCH, prior to that, the previous blog post was in June last year, so it's safe to say that the documenting of Mason's journey has slowed down and for good reason..... It feels like we’re "back to normal". Hospital visits are for check-ups and routine scans and that’s the way we’d like to keep it. In the past year, people have shown lots of interest in how Mason's doing and where he is in his plan, what happens next and concerned if he'll need any more treatment, which got us thinking that we feel we haven’t entirely ..read more

Following on from blog post 19 Mason21 Big LATCH Raffle I wanted to type up a quick entry to update all our supporters who have kept us going up to, and during the our challenge. The Endure24 race was linked to the fundraiser as a motivator by a group of friends who wanted to do something in the name of a good cause. To complete it, just required us to keep running for 24hrs. Individually impossible but like most things..... with good teamwork there was hope! and... We made it! Infact we didn't just make it, we smashed it! Team ‘Mason21’ successfully completed Endure24 2022 and managed to run ..read more

Throughout the whole year of 2021 there was one person who has stood out, has supported us and helped Mason through his struggles, her efforts have been hugely appreciated and she’ll probably never come to realise how much of an important role she's played. She looked out for Mason, was naturally caring, and consoled him when he was struggling through his various stages of treatment. Whether it was making sure he had his favourite toy, blanket, snack or a bottle of milk, she did a great job of making him feel like everything was just normal. He didn’t always receive her gestures graciously eac ..read more

Today we are trying to do something a little different and host an online raffle to support LATCH Welsh Children’s Cancer Charity with their latest ‘accommodation project’ estimated to cost up to £8000. If you have had the pleasure to read, laugh or cry through some our previous posts, you'll already know that LATCH played a big part in Masons year through his cancer diagnosis, treatment & recovery. The charity endeavors to support families every step of their journey and help provide a 'home from home' environment at the children’s hospital during extensive treatment/surgery stays. Last s ..read more

In the beginning, when hospital visits with Mason were becoming more frequent, and to the point at which we were told of Masons diagnosis – we knew there was no way out. Instantly the rest of our year had just been blocked off and we were ‘busy’. Our sole focus is on our little man and there was no wiggle room for excuses or backtracking. It was, as if we had been given the nudge down a waterslide and there was nothing we could do to retreat or deviate…just hold on and wait for the end – whenever that was? Once that analogy had settled in, we found that being positive about things was the heal ..read more

We have touched in previous blog posts how important Masons nutrition has been throughout the year and wanted to take a brief moment with this post to open up about some of the things that went well. We are not nutritionists or have any fancy post nominals confirming we’ve studied whether cucumber is healthier than Haribo but we found a few things that seemed to work so we wanted to share. Leading up to Masons first birthday he led a fairly healthy lifestyle, milk, milk, some more milk before being weened onto fruit and veggie smoothies and then onto some solid foods. Devoid of all the best th ..read more

We have touched in previous blog posts how important Masons nutrition has been throughout the year and wanted to take a brief moment with this post to open up about some of the things that went well. We are not nutritionists or have any fancy post nominals confirming we’ve studied whether cucumber is healthier than Haribo but we found a few things that seemed to work so we wanted to share. Leading up to Masons first birthday he led a fairly healthy lifestyle, milk, milk, some more milk before being weened onto fruit and veggie smoothies and then onto some solid foods. Devoid of all the best th ..read more

"The ‘one parent policy’ has negatively impacted the entire span of our year from diagnosis, through chemotherapy, operation, and radiotherapy. It is cruel & unnecessary. Both parents should be able to support their child at a time when they need them the most." The support and effort required to look after Mason this year was so alien to us. We were only just getting used to having two kids in our family which is a lovely yet challenging feat. Between Em & I we both have our strengths and weaknesses, obviously we tend to gravitate to our own personal strengths to help things flow and ..read more

During Mason’s chemo we were told it was likely that he would need radiotherapy. Our initial impressions were….okay? How does that differ from what we’ve been going through before, and why does he need something extra? As previously mentioned, chemo did a good job at shrinking the tumour to less than 30% of its initial size, the operation would have the core removed but due to not being able to achieve a negative margin there would still be fragments present around the main site. This is where, we were told, radiotherapy would come and flex some muscle. Mason was recommended for Proton radioth ..read more