Katrina Gilruth

I’m taking on The Long Run for the fifth time

💙14 August 2020 Ross was riding his bicycle on a bike path around Lake Burley Griffin on his way home from work. His phone rang and it was his GP calling to tell him he had prostate cancer. Can you imagine hearing the news like that? We often ride the lake and he always points out the exact part of the ride that call came through. It is something he will clearly never forget.

At the time I was living in Sydney, it was Covid lockdown which made our long distance relationship even harder. It was only new, we were only 12 months into when he texted me, “I have prostate cancer”.  There were lots of appointments I had to join remotely and when borders were open I crossed them. 

The following February Ross had a prostatectomy. Every PSA test from February 2021 has come back around 0.03 which is fantastic.

This September Ross goes in for another operation to hopefully give him a better quality of life after that prostatectomy. An operation we had to fight to get and one that we thought was out of our reach but it ended up a professor in Sydney also wanted to give Ross a better quality of life.

This will be my fifth long run. I would normally have set myself an outrageous goal to achieve but not this year. I just do it for Ross, he doesn’t need me to prove anything. We both want the same thing, for men just to get tested and catch this horrible disease early. 

This year I just want to raise $600. $100 for every year since Ross got diagnosed. I don’t need to walk, run, ride the farthest distance or raise the most amount of money. I just want to do my best for Ross and other men. 💙