Poppy Bruford's story

Poppy’s Story of Love, Loss, and Leaping for Pancreatic Cancer Awareness Month

November is Pancreatic Cancer Awareness Month, the time of year many of us learn how little we actually know about the pancreas, and how devastatingly fast this cancer can move. For Poppy, 36, from Wiltshire, it’s also the month of birthdays, anniversaries, and a skydive she’s taking in memory of two men she loved, her dad, and her husband, Rob Roots.

She’s doing it for UK charity, Pancreatic Cancer Action, to raise funds and awareness so more people can recognise the symptoms earlier and more families can be spared what hers went through.

This is her story, told plainly, with courage, and with a purpose, to save someone else’s tomorrow.

Poppy’s dad became profoundly tired, with back pain and was losing weight, which resulted in a trip to hospital. The results were crushing, pancreatic cancer. He was sent home with hospice care and passed away just three days later. Quick doesn’t begin to describe it.

“You kick yourself because it was there in plain sight, but you don’t see it.”

Grief hardly finished its sentence before life dealt Poppy another blow. Rob, 36, an area bar manager for wedding venues, started with relentless diarrhoea, severe stomach cramps, and deep fatigue. With erratic hours and long shifts, extra sleep didn’t ring alarm bells. Doctors suspected IBS. Diets were prescribed. Bloods came back “fine.”

But Rob kept deteriorating, dramatic weight loss, vomiting after meals, even hearing changes linked to the rapid weight loss. Two days before his diagnosis, he went to A&E in excruciating pain after vomiting blood. An urgent scan lit up like “fairy lights tied in a knot.” Tumours everywhere, bowel, stomach, liver, back. Stage four.

Feeding tubes, fluid drains, hospital corridors, and impossible conversations followed. Eventually Rob moved back home to be cared for by his mum, a former nurse. Poppy stayed close, juggling visits with two little ones, an 18-month-old and a two-year-old.

“People say I’m doing well. Behind the scenes it’s carnage. But you keep going. You don’t stop moving.”

November carries a lot. Poppy and Rob shared back-to-back birthdays, hers on the fifth, his on the sixth. Her youngest turns three on the eighth. It’s also when she lost her dad. And it’s Pancreatic Cancer Awareness Month, another stark reminder.

This year, she’s choosing action, a skydive for Pancreatic Cancer Action to raise funds and awareness. Rob hated heights. “He’ll be with me,” she says. The goal isn’t just donations, it is attention, because too many still don’t know the symptoms, and too many are dismissed because they’re too young or too healthy-looking.

Pancreatic cancer is notorious for vague, easy-to-explain-away symptoms, especially in younger people. Poppy hopes her family’s experience helps others push for answers sooner.

Symptoms Rob experienced included persistent diarrhoea and urgent trips to the loo, often right after meals, severe abdominal cramps and back pain, dramatic unexplained weight loss, vomiting after eating eventually with blood, exhaustion beyond “just tired,” and bloating or abdominal swelling from fluid build-up.

If this cluster sounds familiar, don’t settle for “probably IBS.” Ask for escalation, bloods, referral, and imaging. A scan changed everything for Rob, it just came too late.

Because too many of us can’t point to our pancreas on a diagram. Because friends still confuse “pancreatic” with “prostate.” Because some clinicians see a 30-something and think diet not danger. Awareness isn’t just posters and purple ribbons, it’s timely scans, second opinions, and families who know what to ask for.

And because stories move people. Headlines reach millions. A TV spot reaches more. If sharing her family’s reality gets even one person diagnosed earlier, Poppy says it’ll be worth it.

Poppy’s plan is simple, jump out of a plane, raise as much as possible, and talk about pancreatic cancer until more people recognise the warning signs. She’ll be sharing photos because the world needs to see what resilience looks like at 120 mph, terrified, determined, hopeful.

“Just don’t stop,” she says. “That’s how I get through.”