Sea is a sanctuary for surfer living with cancer

“The water is my safety blanket, as soon as it goes over my face nothing else matters.”

Surfer Mark Jones has been living with incurable blood cancer for five years.

Since being diagnosed with myeloma in 2018, the married father-of-two has endured numerous cycles of chemotherapy, two stem cell transplants and been forced to come to terms with an uncertain future.

Throughout it all the sea has been his sanctuary.

“It’s the most therapeutic thing ever really,” said Mark.

“Even if I’m not in the sea, I’m at the sea and listening to the sea or looking at the blue of the sea. It just calms me down.”

Mark, 53, who lives near the sea in Llantwit Major in Vale of Glamorgan, got the surfing bug as a young teen.

“I failed all my exams due to surfing,” he laughed.

“Dad threatened to snap my surfboard.”

After a summer of surfing in 2018, he began experiencing frequent nose and ear infections.

His wife, a nurse, became more concerned when he was rushed to hospital with suspected appendicitis but medics could not find what was causing the pain.

Blood tests and eventually a bone marrow biopsy followed and he was diagnosed with smouldering myeloma.

Sometimes called asymptomatic myeloma, it is an early form of the condition which usually progresses to active myeloma at a slow rate.

But just months later he was told it had progressed to multiple myeloma.

“It’s a bit like being winded, being punched in the stomach, I was absolutely devastated,” said Mark.

“Where had it come from? I’m fighting fit. I look after myself.”

Mark is one of about 24,000 people in the UK living with myeloma, which is incurable but treatable in the majority of cases, according to charity Myeloma UK.

Treatment generally leads to periods of remission but patients inevitably relapse, requiring further treatment.

Mark faced 11 months of chemotherapy which was followed by a stem cell transplant, which destroys any unhealthy blood cells and replaces them with stem cells removed from the blood or bone marrow.

Remarkably, it was while in hospital for his transplant that he decided to set himself a physical challenge.

“In my head it was like ‘if I’d gone out and had a couple of beers, the next morning I’d need to sweat it out… so how do I get rid of that chemo?’,” he said.

He decided to train every day with his hand bike and resistance bands.

A nurse saw what he was doing and suggested he do it for charity, so Mark and a surfer friend then mapped out a virtual pathway through the sea from Cardiff Bay to north Wales so he could virtually paddle there and back.

“It was my way of blanking it all out, getting rid of the boredom of being hospital and then actually doing something,” he said.

He started sharing his progress on social media, followers began posting photos of them having a beer when he was virtually passing where they lived and a film crew began following his story.

Over the 10 days he was in hospital, he completed 1,400 km (870 miles) and finished the challenge on his return home.

After the stem cell transplant Mark went into remission.

“For four years we just lived our lives amazingly,” he said.

All that he had been through transformed his perspective on life.

“In work you’re replaceable,” he said.

“The only thing that’s important now is my family.”

The family travelled extensively and then just before setting off for a holiday to Barbados received the devastating news this paraprotein levels had started rising again.

“I was hoping to go 10 years, 20 years without it coming back and so it was absolutely mind blowing that it was back within four years,” he said.

Mark had another 16 weeks of chemotherapy – all while training for the London Marathon.

In May, two weeks after completing the marathon he had his second stem cell transplant.

This time he completed another virtual challenge during his hospital stay – virtually cycling from Singleton Hospital in Swansea to Pen y Fan, in Powys, and then on to Cader Idris and Yr Wyddfa, also known as Snowdon, and climbing each mountain before paddling back to St Donats in Vale of Glamorgan.

He then completed the last section actually in the sea, paddling home to Llantwit Major with his surfing friends.

“Against doctor’s orders,” he laughed.

“I find it really hard to explain the feeling of going surfing for the first time after it all, those sort of things you can’t describe.”

Riptide, a film documenting his cancer journey, recently premiered in front of an audience mostly made up of Mark’s friends and family and will now be shown at film festivals.

He is preparing to return to work lecturing and running a rugby league academy at Coleg y Cymoedd. He is also general manager of Wales Rugby League.

Keeping active and spending time with others helps him stays positive but he admitted his health and fears for the future were constantly on his mind.

“I never, ever stop thinking about it,” he said.

“But hopefully it doesn’t come back for a while and then when it does come back, there’ll be another treatment, another treatment, another treatment.”

He is determined to live every day to the full with a focus on making his wife Bridie, son Reubyn, 18, daughter Isla, 16, happy.

“Everybody does it but we just live to pay the man and go through life and perhaps moan at things that are not worth knowing about,” he said.

“Now I’m like, actually let’s go and do stuff.

“I say this to people and it blows their mind but cancer change my life for the better.”