At the end of 2024 Belfast man Matthew Starkey had so much to look forward to.
A new teaching job, a new home, a new car and the prospect of getting married to his fiancée.
But what started out as a seemingly innocuous football injury sent his life down a path he never could have imagined.
He is still looking forward, but the 32-year-old’s plans never included gruelling treatment for cancer.
The prognosis isn’t good. Doctors say he may have just a year. But positivity remains.
He’s not sitting back, despite spending more than a month in hospital since March rather than teaching at St Colman’s Sixth Form College in Ballynahinch, after his temporary contract was made permanent.
Indeed, everything about his situation since that moment has been fast.
“Life’s really throwing everything at me,” he said.
While Matthew, who teaches business, IT and PE at St Colman’s, will remain in hospital until his round of intensive treatment ends, he’s ready to throw everything back at life once he gets out — starting with getting into his new home with fiancée Carrie Fleming.
By September he hopes to take part in the Belfast Half Marathon in a wheelchair to raise funds for the Friends of the Cancer Centre.
He said: “A couple of months ago I was an able-bodied man, I went to the gym four times a week.
Matthew Starkey and and fiancée Carrie Fleming
“I’d been playing seven-a-side football and came home with a sore leg. I thought I must have pulled a muscle.
“When the pain refused to go away you think of things like deep vein thrombosis.
“My foot was discoloured, the veins in my leg were standing out.”
Several visits to the doctor followed, and eventually a collapsed valve at the top of his leg was diagnosed.
It was corrected, other tests were clear, but the pain just refused to go away.
“I just felt something was wrong,” he said.
“I can remember buying flowers for Carrie before Valentine’s Day and completely losing control of my right leg, falling into the window of the shop.”
It got to the stage where Matthew couldn’t walk.
“I had shocking pain, I couldn’t go to the toilet, my stomach was so large I looked pregnant,” he explained.
“On February 13 my mum took me to hospital. I had an MRI scan and that’s when they found a 3cm tumour through my spinal cord which would require urgent surgery.”
He was operated on the next day, St Valentine’s Day.
“I had been planning to ask Carrie to marry me, maybe in a year or so. In March I just went for it. We got engaged.”
But a day after she said ‘yes’, the pain returned to his leg. A further MRI scan...
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