ABOUT ED

LOOKING BACK ON ED’s LIFE

Doctor Edward Showler died on Sunday the 11th June 2017 aged 28 years.

Ed attended the Simon Langton Grammar School for Boys in Canterbury before going up to Cambridge in 2007 to study medicine at St John's College, where he qualified with distinction in 2013.

As a doctor Ed worked at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford, the Royal Berkshire Hospital in Reading and University College Hospital in London.

Ed had begun training at the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead in August 2016, to become a consultant haematologist. Ed believed that he could make a real difference to his patients' lives through the pioneering treatments that were just beginning to come forward in this field of medicine. Ed excelled in being able to communicate with his patients and believed that this lay at the heart of how medicine should be practiced. A colleague wrote to Ed: "Other than being lovely you knew more medicine than the rest of us and were always so calm and natural that the patients quite rightly bloody loved you for it."

In September 2016 Ed was diagnosed with a rare cancer, Clear Cell Sarcoma, for which there is no effective treatment. He made the decision to spend what time he had left making memories for those who he was going to leave behind. He travelled extensively and had some wonderful times with his friends and family that they will treasure forever.

About a year before Ed's diagnosis, he had worked as a doctor in the London Sarcoma Unit at University College Hospital and saw at first hand the effects on patients of this pernicious disease. As a doctor, Ed knew there was no effective treatment.

During his illness Ed took part in a drug trial at University College Hospital London, which showed some initial promise but failed to control Ed's disease and he was taken off the trial two weeks before he died.

He remained "the doctor" throughout his illness, deciding when to medicate himself and when to refuse treatment. In consequence this meant that despite his failing health he was not unduly restricted in what he could do until the final month of his life.

Ed wanted his life to make a difference and he had embarked upon a career that had already fulfilled so much and would no doubt have achieved so much more as both a medical practitioner and researcher.

Ed touched the lives of so many people as a doctor, partner, son, brother, uncle, nephew, friend and more latterly as a patient and his death has left a huge void in the lives of all those who knew him.