My name is Richard Hopson, 53 years old and I’ve lived in Ilfracombe for most of my life. I’m currently a Director at Coversure Insurance Services in the town which has been established since 2012. I’ve been a coach with Ilfracombe Youth for over 10 years and their Club Secretary since 2018.

The reason for me contacting you today is to give you my recent story and what I now want to do to help other within our town and surrounding areas.

In February this year I was unfortunately diagnosed with Prostate cancer. As you can imagine this was devastating, not only for me but also for my wife and two daughters. I’m currently in the process of having Hormone and Chemotherapy treatment and early tests have indicated this is working well. Doctors are confident I will get through this and continue to live a normal life.

The Diagnosis came about from a Work Medical I attended in December which included my first ever PSA (Prostate Specific Antigen) test. The reading came out very high and resulted in a referral over to my GP and after many tests and scans the diagnosis was unfortunately positive for Cancer which was said to be aggressive in its growth. Throughout this and before the test I had no symptoms at all and actually considering myself to be a fairly healthy male. At first, I did not want to talk about this at all but overtime and with the help of all of the positive people I have around me I have found it easier and easier to talk about and try to encourage males in their 40s plus to seek out a test for themselves.

This is where it has become difficult! So many people coming back to me saying they have tried to get a test via their GP and they have been refused if they have no symptoms or cancer history in their family. I was lucky on the day we did our Work Medical. With no symptoms or real cancer history I would never have walked into the GP and asked for this and potentially when the symptoms did happen it may have been to late.

Now, the reason for my Just Giving page. I’ve had time on my hands to process this and to think about what I can do to help. I’ve searched the internet and found out it’s a nationwide problem for men to get a PSA blood test done. I came across a charity that sets up Testing events throughout Devon and Cornwall. The charge is £26 per test, this is no profit to them at all and they will supply and arrange everything. After a long conversation on the phone with them I asked her how easy would it be to set an event up in Ilfracombe to test as many men from our town as we can. We could potentially test 200 men in an afternoon/evening

We have set up a date of 05th February 2026. I’m also keen to try and make this a free testing event so that any financial barriers are not in place. After doing the maths on this it would work out that we would need £5,200 to pay for this! A difficult target to reach but I'm already working on donations from local organisations and businesses plus we have set up a Charity football match on 20th September at Ilfracombe Football Club.

My hope is to raise the full amount of £5200 and to see this event go ahead in February and give the men of Ilfracombe and North Devon the chance to either know they are clear of Prostate cancer or, if like myself there is an issue, this can be dealt with before its to late for them.

Thanks for taking the time to visit my JustGiving page.

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