Paul Fennessy

OVER 22,500 RUNNERS will take part in the Dublin Marathon this weekend, but no other competitor has a story quite like Iain Ward.

It is just over six years since the 37-year-old was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer (stage 3/glioblastoma – an aggressive form of brain tumour).

The particular form of the disease that Ward suffers from has an average life expectancy of five years. 

Ward, who grew up in Clontarf and is now based in London, previously worked as a fitness instructor.

In 2019, while taking part in paid medical trials, doctors found what they initially thought was a benign tumour.

But later tests confirmed it was cancerous and terminal.

Ward responded to the devastating news by focusing his remaining time on marathon running and charity fundraising, saying he wanted to do something of “significance and meaning”.

His inspiring feats have helped the Dubliner attract over 17 million social media followers, sharing his story on a YouTube channel during the Covid pandemic.

This weekend, Ward will participate in the Dublin Marathon. He is fundraising for the National Breast Cancer Research Institute, and his overall goal is to raise the most money ever by a single person for charity.

Baptist minister Steve Chalke, whom Ward met while making an as-yet-unreleased documentary about his experiences with filmmaker Michael Fitzpatrick, set the current record of £2.3 million (€2.75 million) in 2011.

Ward has already raised over $500,000 (€447,000), but is unsure when or if he will eventually get his name in the Guinness Book of Records for what would be a remarkable feat.

“We’ve raised a lot of money, and got loads of followers,” he tells The 42. “But we’re still in the area where we’re almost treading water a little bit. Whereas loads of stuff could do well.

“Releasing a book could lead to making a significant difference to how much money is being raised. But you don’t know what way life is going to go.

“I could get a call tomorrow from a big corporate company saying: ‘We want to give you a load of money if you do this.’ And it’s like: ‘Okay, the world record has been broken.’ Or it could be, it could be another five years. It could never happen. I could live another 10 years, and it might never happen.”

Ward has completed over 20 official marathons, including Dublin on multiple occasions. Other challenges include running 32 half-marathons in 32 consecutive days across Ireland’s 32 counties, while wearing a 32lb weighted vest.

“My goal is not to necessarily be a hugely altruistic person who’s like: ‘I’m just here to help save the kids,’” he explains.

“It’s definitely something that, as a byproduct, I’m very happy that is happening because it means that what my goal is gives it meaning.

“But my main reason for doing all this is the challenge to myself. And I always try to let people know that because I really do hate when you hear people talking about how their motives are for almost holy and righteous reasons – if you’re doing it because you like the fitness element to it, say that.”

Ward pictured during treatment.

Despite his predicament, Ward comes across as upbeat. He says some people can be a little taken aback by his countenance.

“Not in a nasty way, but they used to say: ‘I don’t know, man. It sounds like you’re in denial about what’s going on.’ 

“And I wouldn’t take that as offensive. I try to think of that in my own mind. It’s like: ‘Right, they’re not pulling that out of nowhere.’ That’s a certain sort of psychological thing of how human beings deal with death, so I was always thinking very consciously: ‘Is that what I am doing?’

“And I concluded that I don’t think I am in denial any more than everyone else in the world at my age is in denial about the end of our lives, and it’s because I don’t have any symptoms.

“I used to have seizures, and I used to have problems with my ability to speak, but that went away fairly quickly, and so seeing as how that’s been gone for a long time, over five years now, it’s no different to you. Do you have any major health problems that you’re now thinking: ‘Oh God, I’ve got to write a will and think about who is going to take over in my absence.’

“Most people don’t because it’s like religion in a way, where it requires a lot of belief, and there’s not much physical evidence to grasp onto, so that’s why it’s literally called faith. It’s about believing in something without having something to grip onto.

“If you can’t see something in reality, it’s hard to say that you’re going through the actual stages of death. So I don’t think I’m even in those stages, let alone in the stage of denial.”

Ward adds that the best-case scenario for his fate is “completely up in the air”.

He explains: “I could be cured of cancer completely at the moment, but they wouldn’t be able to tell because when they do an MRI scan, they can’t tell the difference between damaged scar brain tissue versus tumour tissue.

“It shows up similarly in an MRI scan. So I could be completely free of the stuff. But they’re not able to tell, because for them to have another proper look, it would involve another amount of craniotomy surgery, but it still wouldn’t be 100% [definitive].

“The reason why so many cancer patients, when it looks like they’re clear, they say that they’re in remission, is because often cancer cells can’t actually be detected on the microscopic level. So they could be in our blood and in our bodies, but then they haven’t metastasised enough to be detected, so they don’t want to give false hope to people to say: ‘Hey, you’re absolutely cured. Get back to being on the pints and smoking cigarettes again. You’re grand.’

“Even if they were to do another craniotomy on me and scan my head, they still wouldn’t be certain if I am fully clear, so you know they don’t bother.

“So I could live to 80. Without sounding too crazy, with the growth of AI, you never know.”

Ward received his initial cancer diagnosis in 2020.

In many ways, Ward’s life has not changed dramatically since the diagnosis. Fitness has always been an area of interest. The cancer has, however, given him a renewed sense of purpose and a specific goal to achieve.

“There’s nothing more important to me. I tend to get minor anxiety when I go on holiday, whether that be for Christmas or anything like that, and there’s no work involved in it, just because there’s a voice in the back of my head just being like: ‘Time’s ticking. You’ve got to do something. Make a video here or reply to an email.’ So I’ve become a bit of a workaholic in some ways.”

He continues: “A big difference is waking up and there being no doubt in my mind of the ultimate goal. Whereas in my late 20s, every so often I would have that trees-from-the-forest scenario. I had nothing in front of me. It’s like: ‘What are you doing?’ You’re just existing at the moment. You’re working a job that is just paying the rent. You have no savings. What are you thinking about?

“Are you thinking about having a family? Good luck doing that when you have no savings, and you can’t have a house. And are you basing your whole life on finding another person? Do you have nothing else? If you don’t find love, is that the only thing that your life is going to have? And it’s not a bad thing to want to have family and have that as a high priority. But I think when you have that and nothing else, your life is dependent on another person, I don’t think that’s an entirely good way to live.”

Ward also says he finds it hard to compare his situation with others who have cancer, even though his story has evidently touched and resonated with millions.

“I have got so lucky in that, other than my treatment and my surgery, which was quite hard, the symptoms faded away very quickly. I only had one really bad day with the chemotherapy, and that was because I wasn’t taking my anti-sickness medication.

“It’s such a wide umbrella of diseases, and so many people’s experiences are vastly different. So even though I have the title of being a cancer patient, I don’t think I have the same lived experience as many other people who are suffering from cancer.

“I still have imposter syndrome in that regard, where someone is opening up to me about their cancer situation, and I don’t feel like I’ve actually gone through cancer like a lot of other people have, given the level of suffering and the hardships that they’ve gone through.

“But I still see lots of positive messages about how I have helped them get out of bed and help them deal with what they’re going through, which is an amazing thing to do.

“You don’t need to correct them by saying you didn’t suffer as much as they did. They’re happier with the situation, and [despite] my own inability to believe my own situation, it’s like – the outcome of this is a positive thing. So go with the flow rather than trying to argue against them that I don’t feel like I should be looked up to.”

Ward's story has attracted over 17 million social media followers.

One of the main ideas Ward promotes through his work is an anti-consumerist message, which his cancer diagnosis has emphasised.

“This is something that is backed up by social psychology and science – once you hit a certain amount of money, the level of happiness stops increasing because you’re safe, you’re secure. Now, what do you want to focus on in life? And that’s a message that I want to try and push out to people. Particularly with the massive wage divide, there’s far too much bragging about how much money someone makes, and it’s like, why do you care? Why do you care that they have a Ferrari that has diamonds on it? Those things are a nightmare to park. You can’t do your fucking shopping in them. They’re stupid cars. Get a normal car so you can park in a normal car park.

“So much of this is not really about what is important in life, as opposed to: ‘Hey, look, my father was rich. Amn’t I impressive? Look at this fancy watch that I have.’ And it’s like, you didn’t work hard to get any of that shit. You got that from someone else’s hard work, and who cares? This is a shiny thing. You’re trying to show off an achievement that you didn’t do.”

Iain Ward’s new book ‘Terminally Optimistic’ is available for pre-order. More details can be found here and here.