A kind-hearted Dublin man who discovered he had cancer during a medical trial is dedicating the time he has left to raising money for charity.
Iain was working in a gym and teaching fitness classes. But in 2019, the "King of Chemo" underwent an MRI as a part of the trial where they discovered something abnormal.
Despite not having any symptoms, Iain was diagnosed with cancer and underwent brain surgery, where he had to be awake and talking during the entire operation, two weeks after his 31st birthday. It was then confirmed that he had Stage 3 brain cancer, which normally comes with a life expectancy of five years.
Read more: Big-hearted schoolgirl donates hair to raise funds for children's charity
Iain told Dublin Live: “I was doing medical trials at the same time as well to make a bit of money on the side. One of those trials found out that I had a benign tumour but when I got it tested a second time round, it grew significantly and I needed surgery then I got the diagnosis.
“I started focusing on dealing with the issue rather than feeling morbid about it. All human emotions are contagious. I don’t act like anything is going on and that sort of mentality rubbed off on my parents.
“Now I have clear goals I never really had before, I never really had that level of clarity. I did like my job. I'd highly encourage everyone in the world to never do a job that they don’t like because work is a good third of your life so don’t do it if you don’t enjoy it.
“I did enjoy my work but I thought, what is the purpose of it? It’s nice, it’s fun but it doesn’t really have an end result or goal. I didn’t want to own my gym. I enjoy what I do now."
Iain spends his time raising money for cancer research. He wants to break the world record for the most amount of money ever raised for charity. This year, he’s set to run the London Marathon 2022 in under three hours while dressed as computer game character Solid Snake.
But ‘The King of Chemo’ is not looking for money. He just wants to grow his social media channels so he can reach out to big brands that will sponsor him for races and donate that money to cancer research.
He added: "Everything that I do now is kind of based around raising money for charity. It’s so easy to do it. You can just do anything where you’d normally be getting paid and give the money to charity. I do all these charity events like pub quizzes, run events with GymShark, I’ve an immense amount of freedom.
"Hopefully I’ll be doing a lot more before the London Marathon comes around. They’re all really fun to do, suppose you could add the same thing into the different marathons that I’ve done, they’re all events directly related to raising money for cancer research."
Iain’s motto is: “Three years left to live, two records to break, €2.3 million to raise and zero excuses.” He can be found on Instagram with the username King of Chemo and his website is curecancerordietrying.com.
You can donate to his fundraiser here.
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