The hospital bed in which Jo Butterfield lay this time last year, watching her teammates compete for World Wheelchair Curling Championship silverware, seems a long time in the past now.
12 months on, Butterfield is back where she feels most at home; competing on the world stage, and it couldn’t have come soon enough.
Her return to GB's wheelchair curling team is just reward for an individual who’s faced more obstacles in her life than anyone should.
Her most recent challenge was her diagnosis of breast cancer, which came in 2023 and was the reason she was out of competitive action for over a year.
That Butterfield was in GB’s wheelchair curling squad in the first place was just the latest chapter in what’s been a remarkable, tumultuous life.
Having suffered a spinal tumour in 2011, the resulting surgery caused her to be paralysed from below the chest and she then began her para-sporting career as a wheelchair rugby player. But it was when she turned to track and field, specifically the F51 club throw, that she achieved global success.
A world title in 2015 was quickly followed by Paralympic gold in Rio the following year, with a second Paralympic appearance coming at Tokyo 2020.
However, with her club throw event having been dropped from athletics’ Paralympic programme, she took the decision to transfer to wheelchair curling, in which, it turned out, she also possessed a rare talent.
Silverware quickly came her way, with bronze in the 2023 World Wheelchair Curling Championships confirmation that her switch of sport had been a smart move.
But then, in a bolt from the blue, Butterfield’s world changed.
“I found a lump in my breast, which I thought was nothing, but I went to get it checked-out anyway” the 45-year-old who was born in Yorkshire but has long resided in Glasgow says.
“Quickly, though, I was told that there was a good chance it was cancer. I really hadn’t been expecting that news, and then I was told it was big - about seven centimetres. It was also very aggressive, and one of the rarer types of breast cancer.
“Because it was large, I was sent for a full body scan and if the cancer had spread, it would not be curable.”
The waiting for the results of her scan was, said Butterfield, almost unbearable. Understandably, the prospect that the worst possible news was on its way was impossible to ignore.
“You just don't know how to deal with news like that,” she says.
“People tell me I'm strong and I'm brave and I think, yes, I am. I knew if there was a fight to be had with cancer, I'd have it.
“But if there isn't a fight, there's not a lot I can do. The waiting for those results was the worst. Your brain just goes mad thinking about everything.
“You know that if it's not curable, it means you're going to die.
“I was in training when the call with my results came, and she told me it was good news, the cancer hadn’t spread. The relief was incredible.
“As soon as I knew it was treatable, everything felt different.”
Butterfield then embarked on a lengthy chemotherapy programme, which caused some, but not complete, disruption to her training schedule.
For most, the unfairness of being faced with firstly, paralysis, and then cancer would feel overwhelming. But, remarkably, for Butterfield, this reaction was only fleeting.
“I did have a moment when I thought, why me? Why have I got cancer?,” she says.
“But then very quickly, I flipped that narrative in my head because it really doesn't help. I changed it to, well, why not me? Why would I be immune to getting cancer?
“In my life, I've been through things that have seemed insurmountable. But actually, you just get on and deal with it and that was the case again with this.”
Her cancer treatment was, Butterfield admits, very hard. The support she received from everyone within her sport was “incredible” but the biggest reason to remain on the ice while she navigated cancer was that it was the one place in which she felt “normal”.
“It was important for me to keep training because this is what I do. I'm an athlete. I've been in sport for a long time and having that normality of training was everything for me,” she says.
“The treatment did make it harder and I wasn't there every day, but I was there as much as I could. When I was on the ice was the only time I didn't think about cancer.”
(Image: .) There were, Butterfield admits, doubts about whether she could make it back onto the international stage.
One of her chemotherapy treatments came slap bang in the middle of last year’s World Championships, hammering home what she was missing, and how far she was from being an elite athlete at that moment.
But, perhaps unsurprisingly given Butterfield’s track record, she has fought her way back into the GB team and, alongside Gregor Ewan, Austin McKenzie, Hugh Nibloe and Gary Smith, will line up at this year’s Wheelchair Curling World Championships, which begin today and significantly, take place in North Ayrshire.
To be back at the World Championships is significant for Butterfield, and the fact it’s a home event will, she knows, make it particularly unique.
“Being at home means there will be different distractions but it's amazing to have the chance to compete in front of our loved ones,” she says.
"They’re the people who have helped me get to this point and they're the people who have been with me when I've been going through cancer. They've made it possible for me to be here now.”
This World Championships is far from Butterfield’s end goal.
Rather, this is just the start of a year which will, she hopes, end in Paralympic gold in Milan Cortina next March and which would see Butterfield join a select group of athletes who have become Paralympic champion at both summer and winter Games.
Her cancer diagnosis was, in her words, a “bump in the road” as she strives for this goal, but she’s adamant it will not derail her pursuit entirely and in fact, having such a monumental target has helped her navigate the past two years of turmoil.
“On my phone, I've got how many days until the end of the Paralympics because that's the day when I want to be sitting there with a gold medal,” she says.
“It's what I strive for every day.
“Yes, having cancer wasn’t in my plan but I'm glad to be sitting here today knowing that’s in the past. And the saying goes that something that is harder to achieve is that little bit sweeter when you do it."
