Joe keeps playing through the pain

Jun 3 2008 by Paul Loraine, The Journal

PLAYING professional football is the dream of many a young boy. But while for many a lack of talent threatens to crush the fantasy early on, for Joe Hughes – for whom ability is no problem – cystic fibrosis (CF) has provided a potential barrier.

Around two months ago, 17-year-old Joe was released from Scottish Premier League outfit Gretna along with the rest of the youth team when the club found themselves in a well-documented financial crisis.

But the setback hasn’t dampened his belief that he can make it. The way he talks about his experiences as a CF sufferer, it quickly becomes clear he has a way of turning a problem on its head.

“I have never thought about quitting. When I get unwell I just think about getting through it,” he said. “And when I’m not ill, I don’t really think about it at all. It’s only really when I’m on the IV (intravenous) treatment that I think about it.

“I don’t get upset about it, it’s more frustration when I’m ill. When I could be playing football and I’m not able to, that frustrates me.”

CF affects the internal organs, especially the lungs and digestive system, by clogging them with thick mucus, making it hard to breathe and digest food.

It is a condition for which there is no cure and the current life expectancy for a sufferer is 31.

Joe has to have regular physio and take enzymes with his food to help break it down. And when he is particularly ill he has to have a line put into his arm so he can be given drugs intravenously.

Joe’s aptitude for sport runs in the family. His grandfather Gordon Hughes played for Newcastle United in the 1950s while his dad Alan is a PE instructor with the prison service.

Alan, 44, said he and his wife Joy, 43, a catering supervisor at Sunderland University, were more prone to worrying about Joe’s condition than Joe himself.

“To be honest, there isn’t a minute in the day when we don’t think about it,” Alan said.

“We have been praying for a cure but we seem to have been praying an awful long time. All you can do is keep hoping.”

A striker with blistering pace (Joe can run the 100m in little over 11 seconds) he has been banging in goals since he was seven.

He was diagnosed with CF when he was four but started playing football just three years later, representing the City of Durham.

Following his time with Durham, Joe had trials at both Middlesbrough and Sunderland when he was eight before moving to Grindon for a year and finally settling at the famous Wallsend Boys Club – starting point for such football greats as Alan Shearer and Paul Gascoigne.

Top scorer for two seasons in a row, Joe was attracting attention and was offered a contract at Gretna in June last year.

Alan sees Joe’s achievements as an example of what CF sufferers can achieve and urged people to give generously to the Puffin Appeal so that more children can live fuller lives.

How to help

THE Puffin Appeal is aiming to raise funds for a world-class childhood respiratory unit in Newcastle.

It has been set up in the hope of generating £2m to improve the lives of children with conditions such as cystic fibrosis (CF), severe pneumonia and asthma.

Demand from desperately-ill children is beginning to put pressure on the current set-up in the North East, and with childhood services being divided between the three Newcastle hospitals, patients face further upheaval at an already difficult time.

A new building is currently under construction on the Royal Victoria Infirmary site in Newcastle and space has been set aside for the respiratory unit.

Some of the money raised by the appeal will go towards an academic department for paediatric respiratory research.

The rest will also go towards spacious, modern treatment rooms and a general effort to raise the quality of care for patients.

Newcastle is a major heart and lung transplant centre but, the experts insist, it is only through providing comprehensive facilities that more children will survive respiratory conditions with healthy lungs.

To donate to the Puffin Appeal visit www.puffinappeal.com or write to The Puffin Appeal, No. 7 Beaufront Castle, Hexham, Northumberland, NE46 4LT.