Portlaoise woman (64) to run marathon in memory of the love of her life

A PORTLAOISE woman now living in London will run a marathon this month in memory of her late husband, who was “the love of her life” for 40 years.

Sue Harte is gearing up for the London Marathon in honour of the late Damien, also from Portlaoise, who tragically died from a rare form of cancer in 2020.

A retired social worker living in Clapham, Sue will run for love to raise funds and awareness for Sarcoma UK, with her marathon bid on 27 April.

The 64-year-old said: “I am now Damien’s age when he died and he always wanted to run a marathon. I’m not a runner but, in a fit of the vapours one evening, I decided to apply to run on the Sarcoma UK team and they accepted me.

“Taking part in the London Marathon will be an enormous challenge for me and a great big ‘up yours’ to the sepsis I survived in 2023!” Sue was devastated when Damien died from sarcoma, which is so rare that it accounts for less than 1% of all cancer diagnoses.

The first sign that something was wrong with Damien’s health came in May 2018 when the couple were visiting Marrakesh in Morocco. Having climbed Mount Toubkal, they celebrated with champagne after their descent.

Damien then complained of a pain in his side, which at the time seemed like a pulled muscle. When the couple returned to England, he decided to have it checked out and was initially told by medics that he had either a hematoma or sarcoma.

At that stage, the pain was accompanied by some alarming swelling on Damien’s side. Tests and biopsies ruled out sarcoma but the lump on his side continued to grow and became unbearably painful. One option he was given was to ‘live with it’.

At Damien’s request, surgeons operated in October 2018. The ‘hematoma’ was an 18 cm diameter tumour. Damien was told the tumour was a grade 3 myxofibrosarcoma, a type of soft tissue sarcoma cancer. There are only 178 cases of myxofibrosarcoma in England each year.

Following the surgery, Damien had successful radiotherapy only for the cancer to return in his side exactly one year later. In November 2019, the cancer spread to his lungs.

Despite the bleak diagnosis, Sue and Damien remained active and travelled to Oman in February 2020, where they hiked in the Jebal Akhdar mountains and descended 2,000ft into a canyon and back up again.

Sue recalled: “While I was almost on my hands and knees, Damien breezed it. He was fit as a fiddle. Astonishingly, the cancer had metastasised at this point and he hiked with seven tumours in his lungs.” 

Just as the UK was going into the first Covid lockdown, Damien went into hospital for treatment following the trip. Due to Covid restrictions, he had to spend 39 days alone in hospital.

By June 2020, he was unable to walk due to tumours in his spine. He needed two operations and, given the location of the tumours, he was warned that the surgery could leave him paralysed.

While he was having more radiotherapy, Sue slept on the floor of his hospital room for three weeks to keep him company. By August, he was told that it was unlikely he would be able to regain the use of his legs, while he also had pneumonia.

Damien decided that he wanted no further treatment and returned home. He died on 21 September 2020 to the unbearable grief of Sue, their son Conor and daughter Maeve. Maeve has since had a son, Fabian, whose middle name is ‘Damo’, Damien’s nickname.

Reflecting on the time it took for Damien to be diagnosed, Sue said: “Had he been diagnosed earlier, he might have lived longer. He had great joie de vivre and he faced his cancer journey with courage, bravery, humour and selflessness.” 

The couple moved from Portlaoise to England in 1983 and went to the US three years later, where Damien attended the University of Chicago to study for a Master’s in Business Administration before returning to the UK.

A chief financial officer, he helped launch the TV station Channel 5 and had previously worked in industries that included the wind energy and logistics sectors. He was passionate about food poverty and was a trustee of food charity FareShare.

Dr Sorrel Bickley, who is Director of Research, Policy and Support with Sarcoma UK, said: “We're incredibly grateful to Sue for taking on this challenge in memory of Damien. We've invested over £4m across 50 different research studies to help people with soft tissue sarcomas. Our researchers are working on better ways to spot sarcoma earlier, understand why treatments sometimes stop working and develop new therapies that could save lives.

“Unfortunately, soft tissue sarcomas are often diagnosed too late because they are so rare and can be mistaken for other conditions. Sue's fundraising will help us continue this vital research and hopefully prevent other families from experiencing the heartbreak that she and her family have endured.” 

Donations can be made on the online fundraising page at justgiving.com titled ‘Sue is running the London Marathon 2025 to fundraise for Sarcoma UK’.

With a £10,000 target, donations had already reached over £8,200 by 1 April.