Young Leeds cancer survivor feels she's found another family after sailing adventure

A young cancer survivor from Leeds feels like she has found another family after sailing with Dame Ellen MacArthur’s young people’s cancer charity, which is marking Childhood Cancer Awareness Month.

Lola Pinder was diagnosed with medulloblastoma – a kind of brain tumour – when she was nine years old.

Now 13, this summer she joined a sailing adventure with the Ellen MacArthur Cancer Trust from Largs on Scotland’s stunning west coast.

The Ellen MacArthur Cancer Trust inspires young people aged 8-24 to believe in a brighter future living through and beyond cancer. For many young people picking up where they left off before their diagnosis just isn’t possible. That’s why when treatment ends, the Ellen MacArthur Cancer Trust’s work begins.

Lola said: “I had a brain tumour at the back of my head. I was going on a bike ride and I started getting really wobbly, I couldn’t balance that much.

“We went to the GP, they said it was nothing, so we went back a few times. It got to the point I was being sick really often.

“Then they sent us to Pinderfields, I got a CT scan and they saw that there was a tumour there. So they rushed me, emergency surgery, to Leeds and they got 100% of it out.”

September is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month and a nationwide Kids Get Cancer Too campaign is highlighting the ways children, teenagers, and young adults with cancer are underrepresented in public awareness.

Every day, around 12 young people under 25 are diagnosed with cancer in the UK – over 4,000 a year. What happens after treatment can be as difficult as, if not even more so, than the treatment itself.

Reflecting on the impact sailing with the Ellen MacArthur Cancer Trust had on her, Lola said: “You get to be free talking about what we’ve been through. You get to say how your journey has been, rather than, if you’re at home, sometimes you feel like you don’t want to give all the information out.

“It feels a bit safer. It’s like, even though you’ve got your family, there’s also another family here who have been through the same thing as you.

“Being able to put the mast up and sail, you feel joy and really proud. The first time you do it, you’re like, ‘oh my God, I didn’t think I would ever do that’.

“You never think you are going to be able to sit in the middle of the water on a sailing boat and just go in the wind. It was really fun. I lost my voice from laughing and shouting so much.”

CCLG - The Children & Young People’s Cancer Association says two in three survivors will have a long-term side effect related to their cancer treatment, which may affect them throughout their life. This can include body image issues, lower educational achievement, relationship and friendship difficulties, and physical impacts such as extreme fatigue, infertility, osteoporosis, thyroid problems and hearing or vision loss.

Sophie McGoldrick, a clinical nurse specialist, has joined the Ellen MacArthur Cancer Trust’s sailing adventures as a volunteer each summer since 2024.

She explained: “One of the biggest themes we see with children and young people is health anxiety and a lot of trauma after treatment. One of the things that has really been lacking is the opportunity for them to have a conversation with other people that understand.

“The children's cancer population is thankfully quite small but it means that for survivors to be able to share and talk about their experience, it's quite hard because they're very unlikely in day-to-day life to find many other people that have gone through cancer treatment.

“Coming away on the Ellen MacArthur Cancer Trust trip gives them an opportunity to talk about how they feel without having to consider anybody else's feelings, because these young people understand because they've all been through it.”

The Ellen MacArthur Cancer Trust is there for anyone who needs somewhere to turn, no matter how long off treatment they are.

This Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, the Ellen MacArthur Cancer Trust is asking everyone to Gather for Good, to raise vital funds so more young people who need support can benefit from the same transformational experience as Lola.

Find out more at: ellenmacarthurcancertrust.org or follow @emctrust on social media