22 January 2024 , 18:13
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A popular racehorse trainer will start a course of radiotherapy treatment next week after being diagnosed with stage four lung cancer.
Pat Murphy has been training since 1991 and celebrated his biggest success when Supreme Glory won the Welsh Grand National in 2001 and was runner-up in the Grand National in 2003.
The 65-year-old trains a small string in Hungerford, Berkshire, and also still rides out but during last summer he began to feel short of breath.
After a chest x-ray and CT scan he was told he had developed lung cancer which had spread to his lymph nodes in his neck and resulted in some lesions in his brain.
“The NHS has been nothing short of phenomenal,” he said. “It’s eight weeks since I presented at the doctor and I start radiotherapy next Tuesday, That is out of this world.”
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Murphy, whose brothers Declan and Eamon were leading jump jockeys in their era, says he is carrying on as normal.
“I feel absolutely fine,” he said. “I am still exactly the same as I went to the doctor in the firstplace.
“I had a shortness of breath walking up the hill with the dog. There was the one morning riding work when I pulled up really short of breath which was what kicked the whole thing off.
“I am still doing what I have always done very day and am enjoying it.”
Murphy will have three sessions of treatment in Oxford before underoing immunotherapy treatment in Swindon.
“I don’t think the radiotherapy side effects are too bad,” he said. “It will depend on how I take it. When it gets to next week I will take it day by day to see how I feel after each treatment.
“The immunotherapy starts a few weeks after that and that has had great results.
“The fact of the matter is, the cancer is incurable but hopefully it’s treatable and manageable. Hopefully it will be treatment and management and we get a long time out of it.
“I’ll be over the moon if I get to be one of the people who gets to live with cancer, rather than the opposite.”