Teddy Gould

Teddy Gould went home to collect his halo on 25th October 2007 at 11:52am aged 24yrs
Ted was living with his mum and brother Bradley in Alkrington Manchester where his sister Toni visits nearly every day and often came to stay.
Teddy had malignant melanoma (skin cancer) diagnosed in October 2006

Teddy's real name was Kevin but he was always as cute as a Teddy bear so the name Teddy stuck with him from being a baby.
Teddy fought his illness with great strength and dignity, like so many others with cancer the pain he went through was horrific.
Many lives could be saved if we could learn more about this disease and protect our skin from the harmful sun rays it is becoming so much more common these days and the pain felt is terrible due to it being on the skin surface with all the nerve endings before it then progress' to the internal organs.

Teddy had great faith in god and his spirituality deepened to a level not often experienced by someone of his age, he prayed daily and when we visited christie cancer hospital he would pray for all the other patients as he seen them dying but he never thought he would die.
Ted expressed his love openly for those whom meant the world to him and he got the chance to tell those whom had let him down in life how he felt, no bitterness was taken with him.
Teddy was open and honest and the most loving, innocent, genuine, beautiful, handsome, funny practical joker & loyal person you could ever have the pleasure of meeting and nothing will ever take away the pain of losing him he has left a massive gap in everyones life, Teddy will never ever be forgotten. xxx

Thankyou if you attended Ted's funeral there was in excess of 1000 people that attended so we did not get chance to speak to every person and not everyone could fit in the church or get close to the graveside or the bar in the Irish centre but thankyou it was overwhelming seeing the amount of people swarming the streets and funny when the police helicopter came out because they thought someone famous was being buried, well Ted you may not have been famous but you certainly are a legend and well loved by everyone. x

Thankyou even if you did not know Teddy but are visiting his page, please take a moment to leave a message or light a candle and if you want his help just ask him he's very good with miracles, he was buried on 'all saints day' so our priest commented on him now sitting in heaven with the saints so pray to him - just come back to tell him what a great job he's done once the miracle
happens. x

Teddy has fundraising events but you may not be able to attend so your donation online would be appreciated if you are able for Chritie Cancer hospital.
http://www.justgiving.com/lorrainegould2

Love Lorraine (Teddy's mum)

Teddy's journey

Teddy was fun loving, sensitive, beautiful young man who always looked for constant re-assurance that he was doing the right things in life, he had so many friends and everyone who met him loved him, he was very protective and loyal and thought very deeply about things, Teddy was and still is a truly special person. I am telling his story so that people can understand the truth about the evils of cancer and how it effects the sufferers life and the lives of those around, so many others have been on this journey and are on this journey right now....

Teddy worked as a pointer, he tried to keep himself fit by going to the gym and boxing and he enjoyed a great social life with his friends. Teddy noticed a sore on his lower back which would sometimes bleed, when he showed it to me I thought he had just been picking at a spot or something so I gave him sudacrem cream to put on it, the spot did not go away and began to look a bit messy so i took him to the doctor (he would never have gone otherwise) the doctor gave him an antibiotic cream and said it was just a sore that had become infected maybe... Teddy used the cream and after that he didn't mention it again for a while then one day he said 'mam have a look at my back cos that sore's still there and it keeps bleeding' I looked and it was a mess so i sent him packing to the doctors again and again the doctor said it was nothing to worry about giving him further cream but it did not go away instead it grew to the size of a large marble, I marched him back to the doctors and they booked him an appointment to have it removed in the GP's surgery (this shouldn't have happened the GP should have reffered him!) I watched as the GP cut into Teddy's back and removed the growth, he put it into a jar and Teddy said 'wow mum it's massive it looks like a brain' so i said 'that's were it's been hiding all along Ted, what we gonna do now it's been removed all together??' and we all laughed, little did we know that it was an ugly aggresive cancer, the doctor was assuring us still that it was nothing but he was sending it away for routine tests which could take up to a month to come back, this was in sept 2006.
I went off on holiday to Mexico, it was late Sept 2006, whilst in Mexico I dreamt that Teddy had stabbed me in the heart and the pain was unbearable and his brother Bradley was also in the dream and he stabbed me in the back, I woke up crying and could not get back to sleep worrying about the boys at home so i sent my sons and my daugter txt checking everything was ok and they replied not to worry, the test results had not entered my head but i was to discover on my return that on the day of the dream Teddy had been diagnosed with cancer but they did not want to spoil my trip by telling me over the phone so kept it until i returned.
Teddy was referred to Christie hospital and togther we were told that he had malignant melenoma - skin cancer, they explained that the depth was 11 and anything over a 4 was serious, they also discovered a lump in his groin, this was cancer in the lymphatic system, they operated on Teddy to remove more skin from his back and also to remove the lymphs from the leg, we hoped and prayed that it had all been removed - this was Nov 2006. They offered Ted trial drugs (interferon) but this would have made him very ill over the christmas so he refused and decided that he'd start treatment after christmas. I begged Teddy not to drink and eat healthy but it was christmas time so there was no telling him, I wanted him to build his immune system to have the best fighting chance but he thought they had removed it now so i'm ok to get on with life..
I was paranoid checking him every 2mins when i noticed changes i was back onto the hospital, he hated that, he just wanted to forget about it and thought i was being dramatic but i just knew,it was now beginning of 2007. More scans and more bad news but this time i had asked the doctors not to tell Teddy any bad news, they discovered that the cancer was still on the move and now at the base of his spine, they could not put him on the original drug they offered but could start chemo so Teddy started the chemo journey, we also tried every alternative you could think off, I had Teddy on a special diet, i also gave him vit b17 bitter apricot kernels, drinking essiac tea, supergreens and all the best organic fruits & veg, I was sending for cures from the internet and I attended seminars on cancer and cures. We decided to save money to go to the oasis of hope clinic in Mexico where they could administer vit therapy intravenously and give him laetrile which is somthing i had reseached, i also enquired about gene therapy.
Teddy was very spiritual and prayed daily, I had also started taking him to Reiki and he promoted this to everyone, he grew very fond of Ethel the lady who gave him reiki and she grew equally fond of Teddy, they had a very special bond and we'd attend at least twice a week. Teddy loved his family especially his Nan and every week he would ask me to take him to mass with his Nan & Grandad and we'd also go to mass during the week, he loved saying his rosary with all the old dears.

The chemo was not working and the cancer was spreading on his skin across his back, down his bottom and his leg all on one side, the pain he experienced from sensitive skin areas and the weeping and bleeding was horrendous, he would sometimes scream with pain in the shower when the water hit his skin it was heart wrenching. The treatment caused him to have problems with his eyes so he also had to visit the eye hospital once a week, Teddy was also very sick but he did his best to continue to eat to try keep his strength up. I had to give up work because looking after Teddy was now a full time job but to look at him clothed you would never have known he was ill. Teddy fought this demon cancer, I would say to him 'visualise the cancer and knock it right out like you're boxing' and he would try his best to do it, he put so much trust in me and in Jesus he never ever gave up hope. We started to visit other christian churches not just our catholic churches and we tried faith healing, Teddy would have tried anything if he thought it could save him, he used to say to me 'I'm not gonna die am I mum' and I would tell him 'No course not Ted, you must never give up hope, we are doing everything right and the cancer hasn't spread inside it's just on the surface so that's a good sign' This of course was a bare faced lie from me but I could not tell him it had now spread to his lungs and eventually to his heart valve, the combination took him from us.
He was a very popular patient and the nursing staff loved him although he hated going to hospital he would always laugh and joke with them no matter how much pain he was in, he would look at other young men and women and i would catch him with his eyes closed clutching his rosary then he'd kiss Jesus and i'd ask are you ok and he'd say 'i'm fine but i needed to say a prayer for that lad in there cos he looks really ill' Teddy made friends with a young man named Matty on the Y.O.U and another younger lad called Daniel, also at the same time there was a young girl named Cherrelle, all dying with cancer with numerous others we didn't get chance to know.
Teddy was on a cocktail of drugs including morphine based drugs 'oxycontin, oxynorm' these interfere with bowel movement so he sufferd with stomach problems and had to take tablets for that, then he had sleeping tablets also and normal painkillers, anti sick tablets, eye drops..so on - the macmillan nurse was great and we got a special mattress from district nurse.

Teddy wanted to visit Lourdes in the August 2007 but he was not well enough to travel, at this stage he was having regular blood transfusions and his chest was getting weaker, Teddy would sweat a lot, he would suffer with high & low temperature, his body thermostat didn't know when to stop so he'd continue to sweat until he was freezing cold, we would change sheets and his clothes all day long, he'd have cold drinks to cool him down then warm drinks to heat him up and the central heating was on all the time but then the windows and doors would be wide open to cool him down again when he became to hot. Teddy started to sleep beside me every night for the last 4 month of his life, he was afraid that he was not going to wake up so i would lye beside him on full alert, we had to change dressings on his skin cancer everyday sometimes a few times a day because the dressings came off with his sweats, the cancer was weeping and bleeding constant and it was very very painful and red raw, I have photo's because i would keep record of change - always hoping it would change for the better but it just spread further, i would not put the photo's on here as they would offend many.
In late sept 2007 the hospital decided to stop all treatment, Teddy was relieved because it made him feel so ill but distraught because he was afraid nothing could now help him recover, they pacified him by offering radiotherapy and i promised to get him to mexico for laetrile treatment, we decided to do fundraising to help get him there. Teddy lost all his weight in the last month it just dropped off him and i remember thinking 'my son looks like a cancer patient' but we still didn't give up hope of that miracle. Teddy learnt so much in his last year, he learnt how to show love more openly although he had always been very loving he now told everyone exactly how he felt, he opened up the minds of his friends to alternatives and religion and he would sit for hours discussing life, he loved to hear your story no matter who you were. He discovered that material things mean nothing and the most important thing in life is family, friends, peace of mind and mostly LOVE.
Teddy recieved many blessings from many priests and they all said how special he was, they would say he had a great heart and was a special soul, the cancer on the heart valve started to protude but i told him it was nothing to worry about and we'd laugh saying it was just his heart bulging with so much love it was showing through his skin, his heart would race so fast. I became a medical expert in my own little field overnight because i studied the illness, I bought books and researched it on the net, I bought a blood pressure monitor and thermonitors, I bought cool packs & heated pads, we even had a special machine that worked on vibration, Teddy would hold crystals in his hands and i would set the electronic monitor to the correct frequency for his condition whilst he lay and relaxed, it was meant to work on the cells.
He would often sing through his pain, it would hurt him to climb the stairs so he would sing 'i'm climbing up the stairs..lah lah lah lah lah...' Teddy had started using a stick to walk and then progressed to crutches and a walking frame. I was always grateful that he was never bedbound and got about until the end, so many young men on the Y.O.U had stayed in the hospital not able to move from bed, at least Teddy was at home, we always found blessings to count.
Teddy would smell my hair and tickle my head, he would worry not about himself but about me and if he was wearing me out with his illness, but love never sleeps and he could never have worn me out I would have selfishly looked after him for the rest of my life just to keep him here.
In the last few weeks he started to drift in and out of sleep and his breathing became so bad that we had oxygen fitted in the house to which he was attached pretty much every minute of the day and night, he would take the mask off whilst he slept and i'd be putting it back on him trying not to wake him. we had portable bottles for when we went out but he went through these very quickly, still I had him believe he would not die and to trust in God that he would do the right thing, Teddy would ask 'do you really believe in life after death' 'so really i'm not gonna die cos if i did i'd still be able to see ya but you just couldn't see me and one day we'd be together again in heaven, you wouldn't ever forget me would ya?' He asked these questions over and over to all the family and we all told him the same, life is eternal and we will all be together again after death and he'd never be forgotten but not to worry about dying because he was going to get well.
We would go for drives in the car nearly every day and play all the tunes he loved, and we'd sing out loud like a pair of loons! He mainly loved soul & reggae probably because i'd brought them all up on this type of music, he's say 'mam lets have a bit of Bob' and we'd groove along to Bob Marley, Lionel Ritchie, Mary J Blige, Whitney Houston etc and he'd always make the lyrics fit a person or situation he said 'Mary - J not gonna cry' was my song of my life and he had loads of songs for his but towards the end it was Jimmy Cliff singing 'many rivers to cross' He was known for his song associations and everyone who knew him has a Teddy song, we still associate songs to Teddy that we know he would have loved. Toni and I went to see platform Medium Steven Holbrook - Teddy spoke to me through him and said listen to the words in 'wind beneath my wings' i'd never listened to the words before but when i did i cried and cried...
He became very selective in whom he wanted to spend time around and he banished quite a few people from visits because he wanted to spend special time only with special people. One of his friends had a baby boy with my niece a couple of weeks before Teddy went and Ted got to see him, they named the baby 'Teddy'
The girls did the charity car wash to raise money for his trip to Mexico on Sunday 21st October, he was very poorly this day but made the effort by having a shave and attending the car wash for a couple of hours, this gave him the opportunity to experience the love and see how many people turned up to support him - it was amazing and i will be eternally grateful to those whom organised it and let us use the car wash.
On 23rd october i took Teddy to hospital for his radiotherapy appointment but he was so weak i had to put him into a wheelchair, he could not get undressed alone and needed help onto the bed, I spoke to the staff on the Y.O.U and asked them if he could have an enima to ease the tummy problems and they got him a bed then moved him to a side room later that evening, I knew that this was it he wouldn't be coming home and all that he wanted to do was have his enima then go home, (i did bring him home but he was sleeping peacefully and everyone came to see him and put there special photo's, letters and gifts in with him before his beautiful body was laid to rest, i slept in the same room with Teddy for one last night before they took him away to lay his body to rest, his soul remains with me always).
He became anxious so they wanted to sedate him but i was used to him going from the settee to the chair from the chair to the bedroom from the bedroom to the other bedroom then to the toilet then back to the chair then the settee etc etc round and round because his pain wouldn't let him settle, I was used to supporting his weight whilst he got up and down, i was used to him shouting at me because i've knocked one of his sores, i was used to adminestering medication and applying creams and changing dressings, we both lived for the settled moments when we could laugh and chat and sing. I refused to let them sedate him because i know he didn't want that and whilst he was still getting up and down he was alive. I nipped home for a couple of hours the next morning to get showered and changed and on my return he had been heavily sedated because nobody could handle him, he started to bleed badly from the cancer on his back and the bleeding wouldn't stop, i asked the nurse was he going to bleed to death, stupid question I know! He was still slipping in and out of sleep, myself, my mum, my son Bradley, my daughter Toni, their dad and Teddy's ex girlfriend Jo whom he still loved and she still loved him kept a night watch over him. My mum didn't move or blink she just sat like an owl perched on his bed singing and talking to him all night long on that last night.
The last thing he said to me was when he opened his eyes and looked at me with such love, he touched my hair and said 'you've washed your hair and it's down, I want my hair cut mum, can I sing you a song?' so i laughed and said 'go on then what do you want to sing' and he said 'no not gonna do it now cos ya laughing at me, i was gonna sing to ya but not now so there!' like a naughty little boy being stubborn..
Overnight Teddy's breathing became very toiled and it disturbed me greatly because although i'd never heard this noise before i knew that it was what my mum describes as 'the death rattle', I cried to the nurses and asked them to please clear the phlem from his throat, they tried but I think it was just to please me knowing that really there was nothing they could do, I now knew that he was going to leave very soon....
In the morning all the family gathered around his bed, we said prayers with the nun and the rosary and we laughed and we cried, we took communion and we knew that Teddy was still listening, my brother in law went off to practice singing 'oh happy day' one of teddy's favourite songs that we used to sing to make us feel happy and my sister came in with a CD to play his Jesus songs causing a debate about finding a CD player to play it in. Leona Lewis was singing 'bleeding love' on the TV and i was stood at his head stroking his head thinking that's what Teddy is doing he's bleeding all over the bed he's bleeding love right out of him, I was telling him to go and find Roberts baby (my brothers girlfriend had just had a miscarriage)I said to him 'Teddy it's ok you can relax now, go too sleep it's ok you have loads of other family waiting to see you and you need to look after roberts baby'... then.... he breathed in but didn't breath out, i shouted everyone to be quiet because so much was going on in his room with about 12 people there and lots of talking over each other,he exhaled the whole room fell silent, he inhaled whilst Leona Lewis sang bleedin love and he didn't breath out again ... My baby was gone I had witnessed his first breath and now i witnessed his last.
Teddy had a tear in his eye,I know his heart was broken he didn't want to leave.......

Teddy was the first of his friends on the Y.O.U to take the journey onto heaven and i said to him 'make sure you come back and collect your friends so that they are not afraid' they all died within the next couple of weeks and i believe Teddy being the eldest had to go first so that he could help them cross over without fear because he knew that fear and he would hate anyone else to experience it....