Sarah Pitt talks to Lyndsey Balsdon from Okehampton about fighting back from childhood cancer by climbing mountains for charity.

For Lyndsey Balsdon, life is precious. When she was only five, she was diagnosed with life-threatening cancer. Scans showed a tumour in her brain which had wrapped itself around her optical nerve, leaving her blind in her left eye and partially sighted in her right.

She spent three months in Bristol Children’s Hospital having chemotherapy followed by radiotherapy and had to travel daily from home in Okehampton every day for six weeks after that.

The treatment, she recalls, made her constantly sick. Even today, with her cancer in remission, the side effects of chemotherapy linger.

Lyndsay has five brothers – she and her twin brother Daniel were the youngest – and it was a worrying time for her whole family.

‘My mum had quite a hard time because my older brother Michael had pneumonia, then she had to have a hysterectomy about the same time I was diagnosed,’ said Lyndsay.

‘I lived in Bristol Children’s Hospital for two or three months and then I had to carry on going up to Bristol every single day for another three months.

‘I remember having chemotherapy, which made me violently sick constantly. I couldn’t keep my food down and I remember having radiotherapy and having to stay still in a noisy machine which at that age was pretty difficult.’

‘I went completely blind at one stage,’ she added. ‘I just remember waking up one morning and I couldn’t see anything. I was one of the lucky ones though. It came back, I woke up another morning and I could see again.’

She was only given the all-clear at the age of nine. Radiotherapy and chemotherapy attacked her pituitary gland, which has stunted her growth and so, as she puts it, she’s tiny, standing just 4ft 10 tall. She still has to return to hospital periodically, as years of chemotherapy have affected her health. She has taken a growth hormone since she was 13, aimed at both making her taller and boosting her energy levels.

‘With cancer, even when you get the all-clear you are still living with it,’ she says. ‘You have always got the side effects and you still have to go to hospital and you obviously live with the constant fear of “am I going to get it again?”.’

Despite this, Lyndsey has come through the other side as a fighter.

Despite being unable to accurately judge distances as she walks downhill, due to her impaired sight, she has successfully completed a number of walking challenges for raise funds for the charities which helped her.

Last year she undertook the Three Peaks Challenge, walking the UK’s three highest peaks, Ben Nevis, Scafell and Snowdon, with her partner Jon and other family and friends. They raised £2,114 for Cancer Research UK.

And in 2017 they warmed up for this challenge with a 15-mile hike on Dartmoor, raising £1,114.60 for the Bristol Children’s Hospital, where Lyndsey was treated.

For Lyndsey, walking up — and particularly down — hills is challenging, because the damage to her eyes distorts her view of the ground.

‘I had done Ten Tors training with my Scout group but these challenges were far more difficult than that,’ she said. ‘I can’t tell how far away or how close the ground is so when I was walking down mountains doing the Three Peaks I found it difficult to know where to put my feet.

‘My partner is very supportive, though, and never left my side all the way to the top.’

And the confidence boost she has received from completing the challenges has inspired her to plan her next one – a sky dive, which she is planning to do next year to raise money for the cancer charity CLIC Sargent.

This charity helps the families of children with cancer, and Lyndsey’s benefited when she was a child, providing accommodation in Bristol while she was having her treatment at the hospital.

‘I want to do a fundraiser for CLIC Sargent also because they provided a room for me up in Bristol,’ she said. ‘When I wanted to stay away from hospital, they provided me with a room.

‘I love fundraising and giving to people but my main motivation is to say thank you to Bristol Children’s Hospital for taking care of me and without Cancer Research UK I wouldn’t be here today so I really wanted to fundraise for them.’

Lyndsey, who lives on the Meldon Fields estate in Okehampton with her partner, is a scout leader in Torrington, where she enjoys such activities as rock climbing.

‘We do climbing, that is my favourite sport, and walking and other activities,’ she said. ‘I like constantly being busy and being outdoors.

‘I shock quite a few people because I obviously look small and skinny but I’m actually quite strong.

‘My partner’s family have a farm and when I wanted to help milk they were like “she’s too small, she wouldn’t be able to do that”. It really surprised them! Now they are like ‘don’t judge a book by its cover!’’

She said the worst part of her battle with cancer was when for a short time she lost sight in both her eyes.

Everything she has been through has made her grateful for the relatively normal life she now has.

‘Friends say I really inspire them. When they are having a bad day they say “well Lyndsey went through the wars, look at her now!”.’