Never A Good Time For Bad News

It’s been a tough 12 months for us all at Singletrack and grit.cx, but none of us has had a tougher year than our Deputy Editor Jenn Hill. Jenn has lung cancer, categorised as Stage IV at diagnosis – which is about as bad as it can be. While the rest of us see this as tragic, Jenn herself describes it as bad luck. Cancer aside, she’s healthier than the rest of us by a very long way. The fact she has this dreadful disease is baffling to everyone who knows her, but ultimately comes down to just shit luck. It truly is shit.
 

Jenn has continued to work at Singletrack and grit.cx since her diagnosis last year despite the chemotherapy, drug trials, gamma knife surgery, and more chemo. While living with this awful disease she has written features, reviewed products, been on adventures, sub-edited hundreds of thousands of words of copy, ‘encouraged’ copy from late contributors and staff and essentially got on with it while, as her current email signature states, she ‘kicks the arse out of cancer’. It’s no stretch to say that Jenn has absolutely been a main driver and crucial part of the grit.cx team since we started this project last year. Simply put: it wouldn’t have happened without her.
There is currently no cure for Stage IV cancer and sadly Jenn’s treatment options have now come to an end. She’s leaving Singletrack and grit.cx to spend the last few months of her life with friends and loved ones, supported by St Gemma’s Hospice and the amazing team at St James’s Institute of Oncology, Leeds, to whom she and everyone around her owes a great debt of thanks for their expertise and compassion over the past 18 months.
She is a private person and she will be cringing reading this, but she’s also very open and surprisingly frank about the whole situation. She wouldn’t want anyone to avoid the topic while she’s in their company, and it’s been made clear to us all that she’s more than willing to talk about the whole thing. Frankly, she’s amazed us with her determination and courage. It’s a tragedy for sure, but a deeply humbling one at the same time.

As part of her treatment Jenn has taken part in a drug trial that had startling, though temporary results. These drug trials are helping cancer sufferers right n, and the knowledge they provide to the doctors, nurses and teams of researchers that battle this disease on a daily basis will undoubtedly save lives in the future. That’s why, at Jenn’s request, we have chosen Cancer Research UK and Macmillan Cancer Support as our two nominated charities. For as long as you order them, for every sale of the Singletrack signed Jo Burt Issue 100 cover prints, Issue 100 mugs and Special Issue 100 T-shirts, we will donate a set amount from each sale to these two charities. Pre-order in our shop now.

• For our Issue 100 Cover prints, signed by Jo Burt,  we will donate £20 from the sale of each one.
• For our Issue 100 mugs we will donate £3.50 from the sale of each one
• We will donate £10 from the sale of all print and digital subscriptions sold up until the 18th of October 2015
• All amounts raised will be split equally between the two charities.

Shortly we will be announcing the auction of the original Issue 100 Jo Burt painting that we used for our cover. The proceeds of that auction will be split equally between these two charities.

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