I was told I had 5 years to live. I'm spending my time raising money for charities.

• Iain Ward is a 33-year-old who was told in 2020 that he had stage 3 brain cancer.
• He was told he had five years to live and decided to spend his time raising money for charities.
• This is Ward's story, as told to Lauren Crosby Medlicott. 

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Iain Ward. It has been edited for length and clarity.

If it hadn't been for a medical trial I signed up for in 2019, I wouldn't have known I had a brain tumor. 

The prescreening for the trial required an MRI of the head. Two weeks later, I had a phone call telling me I had a benign tumor. My first question was whether I could still participate in the trial. I was told no — that this was a serious medical condition and I couldn't complete the trial. 

I had been completely asymptomatic before the discovery, so it all surprised me. A doctor informed me it was likely cancerous, as it had grown quickly since they found it. Even though I was scared at first, the doctor could tell I didn't want sympathy but practical steps forward. I knew having a plan would take my mind off the problem. I decided to have a craniotomy.

I had stage 3 cancer

The doctors told me I would have speech problems for six to 12 months after the surgery, but six days later, my speech was normal again. I recovered so quickly because of my young age — the brain is able to adapt to damage far easier when you're younger.

After my surgery, I was told I had stage 3 brain cancer. Estimating how long I had to live was difficult, but they guessed anywhere between five and six years. It wasn't a huge surprise to me at this point but did make me reflect on what I would do for the time I had left.

Before I found out about the brain tumor, I was working as a fitness instructor, but work seemed to dry up quickly after I found out about the few years I had left to live. So I started throwing myself into my TikTok channel, amassing over 4 million followers. 

I wanted to do something meaningful

Until I learned about my cancer, I hadn't felt I had done anything massively meaningful. With only a few years left, I wanted to change that, and raising money for charity became my obsession, a challenge for me to focus on. The whole point of my channel is to raise money for cancer charities around the world and rally people to fight cancer, but I like to make it fun — to put glitter on the turd that is cancer. It quickly became fuller than a full-time job. 

I was still exercising, attempting to beat the world record for running a marathon, but had one experience about six months after surgery that surprised me. I had gone for a run and started to feel foggy, so I decided to slow down and push through, thinking it was just an issue I would need to learn to deal with. Next thing I knew, I was being woken up by a paramedic. I'd had a seizure. After that, I knew I had to take breaks when I started to feel a sense of confusion while exercising.

People said having cancer would make me more attractive to women. But I knew that was nonsense. Dying soon isn't an attractive quality, but being successful at something often is. So while I went through a dry spell, my romantic life has somewhat gone back to normal. I doubt I'll end up married or even have a girlfriend. I think that's a very hard sell. I'm an optimist, but I'm also a realist.

On St. Patrick's Day, I'm going to be taking on another challenge — cycling across the US in 66 days. I'll start in New York City and head west to Los Angeles along Route 66. I'm trying to set a world record while raising funds for Movember, when men grow moustaches to raise awareness of men's health issues, because I love a challenge.

I've now got three years left to live, according to the estimate I was given. It isn't long, but I try not to think about it because it doesn't serve a positive purpose for me. I'm just trying to raise as much money as I can with the time I have left.