How Volunteering Saved My Life


I haven’t updated this blog for several months, which is down to a combination of procrastination and being busy rehearsing for an amateur-dramatics production of Blithe Spirit. Ironically, it’s the latter that’s inspired me to write this latest post. 

My latest adventures volunteering with my local am-dram group are something I would have never envisaged this time last year, when I was awaiting the results of a short course of chemotherapy. I had been diagnosed with an abdominal germ-cell tumour in January 2024, which came about following another type of voluntary work.

A month earlier, I had been planning to return to Rugby Hospital Radio, to present a one-off 1980s Christmas show. A few days before the show, I had been experiencing painful abdominal cramps, which I’d put down to indigestion or an irritable stomach. However, the over-the-counter medication hadn’t worked, and after struggling to get through the three-hour radio show, I decided to go to the drop-in centre at St Cross Hospital. The nurse there took my blood pressure and referred me to A&E at the University Hospital in Coventry. After a blood test and quick CT scan, a doctor gave me the news that knocked me for six – my blood was showing tumour markers. A further CT scan in the new year confirmed the worst, but fortunately, the prognosis was good. The chemo wasn’t as bad as I expected, and I got the news in June that I was cancer-free.

I still wonder what would have happened if I’d not gone into the hospital radio station that December and left it later to get checked. Who knows? What is certain is that this experience (as well as bumping into my cousin, who told me about his daughter living the dream as a professional dancer and model) made me realise how much I had been wasting my life, so I decided to give am-dram a go. Two plays later, I’ve made some great friends and had tremendous fun. Volunteering has truly saved my life.




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