Ryan is 45 and lives in Blaby. He is both a patient at LOROS and a huge fundraiser for the charity.
“I was first diagnosed with cancer 13 years ago, when I was 32. My mum noticed a lump in my neck which was diagnosed as thyroid cancer. I didn’t know what it was really or what cancer was. It’s all gone steadily downhill since then!
It spread to my spine and 8 years ago I had an operation on my back. I was in hospital and recovery took a while so I needed to get a hobby to get me out the house. I’ve always been into remote control cars and I thought I’d like to try a drone. So I researched it and bought one. I have lots of farmer friends so they let me fly it across their fields. I got quite good at it and started filming them combining and using farm machinery.
No one was really filming agricultural machines but all my friends drove them, so I started to. It was useful for contractors too to promote their work. I put it all on socials and whilst didn’t know what I was doing, I started to gain followers until I had hundreds of thousands of them. I think it appeals to people because they can remember playing with toy tractors when they were young. I always wanted to be a farmer.
Because all my friends were in farming, we went on a Young Farmers’ Tractor Run. I enjoyed it and I remember saying to my friend, maybe we should look at doing this. It would give me something to film and we could raise a bit of money.
I didn’t really know what I was doing for the first Tractor Run. About 60 tractors turned up and we decided where we were going and off we went. We were just a bunch of friends driving around! One of the farmers’ mothers saw us and thought we were protesting about something!
That year we raised funds for the MS Therapy centre. I was having oxygen therapy every week so wanted to raise some money to help them decorate the place.
My friend Rob was the one who came up with the idea of doing the Tractor Run at night and at Christmas. During Covid, I realised how desperate charities were getting for funding. We’d already had to cancel one Tractor Run in the spring 2020 because we went into lockdown. By Christmas I thought, let’s give it a go. So I filled in all the paperwork to the police and a Covid report about how to run it safely. I remember I said that all drivers will stay in their cabs and we anticipate people will stand on their driveways and watch from there. Little did we know that we were going to get 200 tractors out!
As we’ve progressed we’ve raised more money, and more of my friends have got involved. It’s got bigger and bigger.
It brought it home to me how big it had got when I was invited to a meeting at Blaby District Council. It was attended by the bosses of lots of successful local businesses, like Jennos. I couldn’t figure out why I had been invited, until a lady from Blaby District Council said we get more interest in our social media and website from the Tractor Run than at any other time of the year. I was so surprised! She said people were coming from all over the midlands to see it.
It feels like we’ve gone full circle. When we started, during Covid, the police didn’t really want us to run it but now they ring us up and ask to be part of it! Can we bring a vehicle along? It’s nice that everyone can see the benefit.
Year 2 was our best year with £42,000 raised. Totals dipped a little in year 3 and 4 and then we raised £42k again for year 5. This Christmas will be year 6, and I think we’ve raised about £60-70k for LOROS in that time.
I’m hoping by the end of this year we can hit a quarter of a million. Just from putting some lights on tractors!
But if I didn’t have cancer I wouldn’t be doing this. Everything kind of works itself out and leads you onto a different path. It’s odd to say it but even cancer has been an opportunity.
I don’t see myself as a patient at all.
I first experienced LOROS after my back operation when I came for some counselling. I realised I was scared of dying. I was scared of leaving my family and them not being provided for. But the counselling helped me come to terms with the fact that we’re all going to die. That sounds so black and white but realising that made me decide to start living.
Lately I’ve been in for tests and acupuncture. I also see Dr Luke Feathers, whose been really good with my medication, altering it and upping pain killers. It’s so hard trying to see your GP but I can make a phone call to LOROS - it’s far easier actually than getting through to my GP.
I’m going to have another operation on my spine. The metal rods that were inserted previously are broken and need replacing. But there are risks as my lungs are damaged, so they’ve said the odds are about 50%.
My wife Emma leaves me to my fundraising because she can see that it distracts me. I’m not sitting there thinking about my illness. I’m busy and my only constraint is that there isn’t enough hours in the day.
I don’t need to do bucket lists. I feel I’ve done a lot in my life already. I’m quite happy with what I’ve achieved. I’m not depressed – I’m motivated by it. We’re all going to die. To somebody who’s not entertained the idea of death it’s frightening but it will happen to all of us.
Most of the people who know me don’t know there’s anything wrong with me. They don’t know I’ve had cancer for years. I like it that way. They take you as you are and that suits me.”
