I watched my marathon-running husband of 30 years die in agony after he was recognized with incurable most cancers – it’s merciless to let others endure as he did

Running was not just a hobby for Graham Williams, it was one of the passions he shared with his wife Lisa.

The Ministry of Defence worker from south London loved competing in long-distance races, including 27 marathons and two ultra-marathons that took him to far-flung destinations across the world.

But one day in 2017, during a training run, Graham failed to even make it up the road before becoming extremely breathless.

His wife urged him to see a doctor with the couple believing it could be a chest infection.

Instead, they were handed the earth-shattering news that the 53-year-old had malignant pleural mesothelioma, a rare and incurable cancer affecting the lining of the lungs that is usually caused by asbestos.

The devastated couple were told Graham – who had been exposed to the substance while working at the MoD’s headquarters in Whitehall – had between 18 months to five years to live.

In that moment, his wife Lisa Jackson could not have foreseen how Graham would spend his last years – and she certainly could never have anticipated the agonising pain she would witness him going through in his final weeks as the cancer progressed.

If you ask her today to recount the good times during their 30-year marriage, she struggles to recall them, because she says her memories have been ‘overridden’ by the trauma of what her husband had to go through ‘completely pointlessly’ before his death.

In one instance, Graham pleaded with hospice nurses to end his life after his medication failed to control his unbearable pain.

He told them: ‘You wouldn’t treat an animal like this – if it were in this much pain, it would be put down’.

This convinced Lisa a review is needed on laws relating to assisted death in the UK.

On Friday, a Private Members’ Bill proposed by Labour MP Kim Leadbeater will mark the first time the issue has been debated in the House of Commons in more than a decade.

The legislation being put forward would allow terminally ill adults expected to die within six months to get help to end their life.

As part of the safeguards against the misuse of the law, two doctors and a High Court judge would have to verify that the person is eligible and had made their decision voluntarily.

While too late now for Graham, who died in 2021 aged 58, the passing of such a law would, Lisa believes, provide others with ‘peace of mind’ and the ability to choose what should happen in a person’s final moments.

That choice, she says, was one the couple sadly did not have.

She explains: ‘Graham didn’t want to die, he wanted to live. He had the strongest will to live. The issue was that he didn’t want to die in pain.’

Speaking from her new home in Worthing, Lisa described how their life before cancer was one of contentment and a shared passion for travelling and running.

Originally from South Africa, Lisa met Graham while she was an undergraduate at the University of Cape Town. A few years older, Graham was studying for a master’s in philosophy.

His sense of wanderlust began early in life, having been born in Ghana to British diplomat parents, before spending a childhood split between Lesotho, Australia and boarding school in England.

In the years after they married and settled in the UK, Lisa went into journalism and began writing for running magazines, as well as authoring several books on the subject. 

Graham meanwhile was enjoying his work as a research analyst specialising in Pakistan at the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office. ‘He loved his job, and was really conscientious.’

‘We were just so good together as a couple, he supported all my dreams,’ she recalls. ‘I always wanted to be an author, so Graham did all the housework to give me time to write and made me countless cups of tea to keep me going. His favourite expression was, ‘This book won’t write itself.’

‘He also drove me to many of the 108 marathons I did, joined me in 27 of them and on two occasions ran the 56-mile Comrades Marathon in South Africa with me.

‘Our life was just so rich. We weren’t rich people, but we had a rich life.’

Whenever Lisa was offered foreign press trips and opportunities to run abroad, the couple seized the chance. Over the three decades of their marriage, they visited over 100 countries together.

‘We travelled to Russia, Iran, Colombia, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Ghana, El Salvador, Guatemala, Jordan, just everywhere,’ says Lisa, reeling off a long list of places the travel-loving pair visited.

‘We cycled through the jungle surrounding Angkor Wat in Cambodia. We snoozed in the gardens of the Taj Mahal. 

‘We saw the ancient ruins of Palmyra in Syria, drinking ice cold beers with our feet in the sands of the desert. We zip wired down the Great Wall of China – and even nearly froze to death camping near the Grand Canyon!’

Lisa cherishes her memories of travelling with Graham, a man she describes as always being calm and fearless, even when their travelling escapades brought them perilously close to danger.

On one occasion, while in Iran, Graham was subjected to two hours of questioning by the Iranian secret police inside their hotel after officials spotted the diplomatic stamp in his passport. 

On another, the couple became caught up in violent unrest in Bolivia during the 2003 Gas War.

Lisa also recalls how Graham had to visit the Line of Control in Kashmir – a ceasefire line between Indian and Pakistan – as part of his work, which is considered one of the world’s most dangerous borders.

‘He saw Indian soldiers popping their heads up from a trench 10 metres away and there was a very real possibility of him being shot, but still he was not afraid. He was fearless like that.’

Even in the face of his mesothelioma diagnosis, Graham did not fear his potential death, says Lisa – but he was anxious about doctors not being able to control his pain.

Initially he underwent surgery to remove his lung tumours, before embarking on chemotherapy to slow the progress of his illness. 

In 2020, a court found the MoD was responsible for the asbestos-linked cancer Graham had developed, meaning all his treatment needs were taken care of financially.

But the couple were still left wrangling with other questions around what might happen in the later stages.

‘I couldn’t imagine living without Graham, because I had known him since I was 18. He didn’t want to die in an undignified way and we both suspected there might be a lot of pain,’ recalls Lisa, who admits they were so distraught by his diagnosis that they even briefly discussed the possibility of a suicide pact.

Graham’s breakthrough pain – short bursts of intolerable pain – started 21 months before he died. 

‘However, there were many times within that period that he took no morphine at all and his pain was manageable.’

Without the option of a legal assisted death, Lisa – who is also a trained hypnotherapist – convinced Graham to adopt a positive outlook and ‘live in hope, not fear.’

She explains: ‘We had tried living in fear, and it was just horrible. I thought about cancer when I woke up in the morning, during the day and when I went to bed. I’d even wake up in the night to think about it. It was ruining my and Graham’s lives.

‘Eventually we decided instead to live in hope and do everything to ensure Graham lived as long as he possibly could. 

‘We realised the biggest battle was not going to be in his body, but in our minds.’

Over the next four years, the couple did all they could to continue living life as normal. 

‘Many of Graham’s colleagues didn’t know he was terminally ill because he continued working full time.

‘We wrote two travel books and recorded two audiobooks together, and our lives were filled with fun and laughter. We travelled to 20 countries after Graham’s diagnosis, and the only reason we didn’t visit more was because of lockdown. 

‘When we decided to no longer live in fear, our lives improved immeasurably.’

But then, in the final weeks before he passed away, Graham’s condition began to worsen. 

He experienced difficulty with his coordination, was having difficulty picking up a mug properly, and started experiencing seizures that resulted in his left side being paralysed.

When the couple spoke to a consultant, she suspected the cancer may have spread to his brain – a rare eventuality that occurs in only 3 per cent of patients diagnosed with mesothelioma. Scans confirmed the consultant’s fears.

It was at this point that the couple agreed to Graham temporarily moving into a hospice in the hope of better controlling his pain – but sadly the opposite occurred.

During one night of his stay, nurses believed he had a panic attack and was suffering from anxiety and ‘total pain’ – a term used to denote physical but also emotional and psychological pain in a dying patient.

But Lisa believes Graham was not anxious – he was simply overwhelmed by physical pain throughout his body that went unrecognised by his caregivers for hours.

Her worst fears were confirmed after she discovered that his call buzzer had been placed in his left hand – which was paralysed – meaning he was unable to summon help.

On another occasion, when he was experiencing agonising full-body cramps, Graham said he wanted to die.

‘You wouldn’t treat an animal like this,’ he cried, adding that he wanted to go home and have ‘no pain, no pain.’

Following his death, Lisa wrote to the hospice, which MailOnline has chosen not to name, to outline her concerns over how her husband had been treated and in a letter of response, the hospice issued several apologies to her.

In one section, the letter stated: ‘An investigation showed us that the repeated pattern of Graham’s pain and distress, especially overnight, was not acknowledged and understood enough by the clinical team.’

It added that it would endeavour to improve staff training around caring for patients in pain.

Graham was moved back home with Lisa, where he was ‘so much happier’ and passed away just days later.

Those final traumatic weeks, however, haunt Lisa to this day, and she regrets that no one was able to help end Graham’s life legally to spare him the horrific pain he endured.

‘When a hospice doctor asked Graham what his three priorities were, he said it was controlling his pain, being able to walk again and caring for me. Graham didn’t want to go through what he did – and I’m sure he’d have wanted to spare me from having to see him in that much pain.

‘What he endured was completely pointless. He wasn’t going to defeat cancer in the last two weeks of his life.

‘Assisted death would have given us peace of mind that Graham had an option to end his life at the right time, peacefully and completely pain free.

‘In instances of terminal illness it’s clear cut.

‘I don’t think the views of people who don’t want medically assisted dying to be legalised should override the views of those who definitely want it – and need it.’