Mother who finished diary of doctor’s cancer battle says 'I’ve fulfilled his dying wish'

Legacy: the late Dr Mark Sims with fiancée Georgie Latcham.

The mother of a junior doctor today spoke of her pride at being able to “fulfil his dying wish” and publish his book about battling cancer.

Dr Mark Sims’s story went viral after he began blogging about the return of the deadly skin cancer malignant melanoma, which he first had as a teenager.

He initially aimed to raise £1,000 for Cancer Research UK but, in the wake of his death aged 28 in January last year, the total has surpassed £200,000.

A further boost will come from proceeds from his book, PS I Have Cancer, which was published on Monday.

Dr Sims, who had worked at St Helier, Kingston and Croydon hospitals, began the book about eight months before his death but had to leave it to his mother, Sue, to finish.

Heartbroken: Sue Sims finished her son's book after his death

She told the Standard: “A lot of people have said to me, ‘Wasn’t it painful to do it?’ In some ways, but I made the promise to Mark to do it for him. It’s one of the last things he said to me, ‘You will have to finish the book now, mum.’”

Dr Sims was told in February 2015 that he had four to 18 months to live but survived almost two years on innovative new treatments and immunotherapy drugs. In his final message, he said he was “eternally grateful” to previous cancer patients who had participated in clinical trials as they had given him longer to live— during which time he met fiancée Georgie Latcham.

Dr Sims, who had a twin brother and two elder brothers, recounts in the book how he volunteered to be a “guinea pig” for new drugs that could “potentially kill me” in the hope that his stage 4 cancer might be controlled.

He had “nine good months” on dabrafenib, which stops the cancer from growing, and was then put on pembrolizumab, an immunotherapy recently approved for NHS use.

“If he hadn’t have had any treatment, he would have been dead within the first four months,” Mrs Sims said. Dr Sims spent his last 16 days in the Royal Marsden hospital, in Chelsea.

“Death when it came was just a gentle last breath,” his mother wrote.

She said: “His story was so immediate. It was from his hospital bed. From his first blog entry, he just poured out his heart. The love story element was quite captivating. He met Georgie six weeks after his diagnosis. He was giving a talk to the medical students and Georgie was in the audience. She came up to him afterwards to talk. They started dating within days. It was quite a whirlwind romance.”

Ms Latcham, 29, passed her doctor’s exams after Dr Sims’s death. She is now working as a doctor in Portsmouth. “Being with Mark and seeing what he went through has definitely changed me as a person,” she wrote in the book.

“What I can take away from such a loss is to value life. Always be grateful for your health ... Don’t take anything for granted, treasure every day.”

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