A Kent mum who discovered she had cancer just days after her husband died from the disease is swimming the English Channel in his memory.

Sellindge resident Rosalind South is fighting to raise awareness after her husband Alex died from bowel cancer, aged just 34.

The young mum-of-two was faced with the impossible situation just six months after the family first found out about Alex's diagnosis.

Mr South, who worked as an insurance underwriter, went to see a doctor in September 2018 after experiencing stomach pains and diarrhoea and was referred for tests at a gastro-intestinal clinic.

Initially doctors thought they could remove the tumour with surgery, but scans showed the cancer had already spread to the liver, so the pair decided to try chemotherapy.

Tragically, by February 2019 the cancer had spread to his whole liver and he had two tumours in his bowel and, a few weeks later, doctors decided to stop his treatment and begin end of life care with a hospice.

He died at the William Harvey Hospital in Ashford on March 15, 2019, a week before his youngest son’s first birthday and just six months after his diagnosis.

Three days before her husband's death, Mrs South found a pea-sized lump in her right breast while showering and was referred for tests by her GP.

A fortnight later, at the age of 38, she was told she had triple negative breast cancer.

“I broke down,” she recalled. “I’d just lost my husband to cancer and my mum and I were in shock, saying ‘this can’t be happening’.

“That night I curled up in a ball in the spare bed in my son’s room and remember just wanting to give up.

“My mum came in and I said to her ‘I’m so tired and so exhausted and I don’t have the fight in me’ and she said ‘look at that little boy there – you don’t have a choice’.

“So I woke up the next day and began my next battle.”

Thankfully, Mrs South's cancer had been caught early enough to have the lump removed, before being followed by chemotherapy and radiotherapy.

During her treatment, she decided she wanted to tackle a challenge in Alex’s memory and formed a team of friends to take on the 21-mile Channel as a relay.

They are raising money for Bowel Cancer UK, and Team Verrico, which paid for a nanny to help her look after her boys, Maxwell, now four, and Zachary, three, during her chemotherapy.

Training has been challenging because she had to build up her fitness from scratch following her gruelling treatment, with no experience of sea swimming, and lockdowns have closed swimming pools.

"He deserves to be remembered for being the most incredible, brave, talented man I have ever met"

But the team – including Paul Morris, 43, and Bob Clarkson, 53, both from Surrey, and Kevin Shallow, 35, from Billericay, Essex - is hoping to complete the fundraiser at the end of July in under 16 hours, with each member swimming for an hour on rotation.

As well as raising money, the team are also hoping their challenge will raise awareness for cancer in younger people, and encourage anyone with doubts to get checked.

Mrs South, now 40, said: "If our story can help prevent even just one family from going through what we’ve gone through, are still going through, and will do for the rest of our lives, then doing all of this is worthwhile.

"I can’t bring Alex back so we want to do something positive as a result of a real tragic thing that’s happened, because he deserves to be remembered for being the most incredible, brave, talented man I have ever met.

“I am hoping from this story that if even just one person thinks ‘I’ve got a niggling tummy ache’ or finds a breast lump and gets it diagnosed early enough to be treated, then we’ve helped save that life.”

To sponsor the team, click here.

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