Thanks for taking the time to visit my JustGiving page.

Donating through JustGiving is simple, fast and totally secure. Your details are safe with JustGiving – they’ll never sell them on or send unwanted emails. Once you donate, they’ll send your money directly to the charity and make sure Gift Aid is reclaimed on every eligible donation by a UK taxpayer. So it’s the most efficient way to donate - I raise more, whilst saving time and cutting costs for the charity.

So please dig deep and donate now.

My coffee morning and breakfast went quite well, but due to bad weather, we did not get the amount of pople through the door we hoped. So I am quite short of the target I set.

 

We raised £902.18 at the coffee morning, and with gift aid that should bring it up to £1043.68. Still £966.32 left to raise to reach my target in the 3 months my justgiving page is active.

 

I have posted on my facebook profile for each of my friends to donate just £1 each would make the target before Christmas. That would be the best Christmas present.

Any amount of money will help, and every cup counts:

£26 will fund a Macmillan social worker  or family support for an hour.

£141 will pay for a Macmillan Grant that buys new clothes for someone experiencing a change in weight or body s hape while undergoing cancer treatment.

£278 will keep a Macmillan cancer information and support centre stocked for a month.

£400 could pay for an equipment grant for a Macmillan Professional, enabling them to buy specialist equipment

£544 will help run a typical large Macmillan information and support centre for a day.

£755 will fund a service provided by volunteers that offers emotinal or practical support to people affected by cancer for a month

£918 will pay for a Mamillan nurse for a working week, providing expert information, advice and support to improve the lives of people with cancer.

£1,9010 could pay for 10 Macmillan palliative care nurses for a day. To support terminally ill people and their families or carers cope.

 

My first brush with cancer came as a 10 year old child with my grandma. My grandma had be bed ridden for years, and I remember my parents going to Scotland, and picking her up and driving her back to our bungalow, so she could live out the last of her days with her daughter and grandaughter. I do not remember where she actually had the cancer I know it was just said "she was riddled with it".  On the trip back, whilst layng on the back seat in the Mercedes they had bought especially for her to travel back in, my grandma, was running her fingers up  and  down my dad's neck saying "just tell me when you want me to drive". Physically, she may not have been at all well, but on that journey her life and spirits soared.  I remember her having so much pain, and pills, but when she came to live with us, her life changed for a brief time.  My parents took her out ot the British Legion, and the first time in ages, she went out, the hilarity of two women with strong scottish accents, talking about the best way to put on 'pantyhose' and a corset, with belly busting laughter, is a memory I will always have of my grandma and my mother.  I know the nurses who helped my parents with my grandma, made a huge difference, but most of all, the love of my mother, for her mother, has been an enduring gift.

My second brush with cancer came in my 20's with my husband Murry. We had been married when I was 19, and had our two childen by the time I was 22, and at the age of 26 I had to do the hardest thing I have ever had to do, tell our two children aged 4 and 6 that their father was dying of Lung cancer, and had months left to live.   

My third brush with cancer came in my 30's with my Aunty Nancy, another fine Scottish woman, who had never smoked a day in her life, but lived with a chain smoking bookie for many years.  My Aunty was a cheeky woman, and one day when pulled up for speeding the officer asked her "what's your hurry", as he was a very young constable, and my aunta woman in her 50's, she answered " I'm in a hurry to pee young man, and if you keep me talking I will wet my 'breeks' (scottish for pants), he went crimson and told her to drive off.  When asked if that was the truth  - her answer was aye - and that was the story she was sticking too anyway.  My lovely aunt died of Lung cancer, and that was when the term 'passive smoking' became real to me.

My fourth brush with cancer came through my teaching and job in my 40's. As a pain management specialist and massage therapist, I used to teach at a local adult communiity education centre, one night a mother and daughter came to  my class, the mother had just had a double mastectomy and hr reconstruction surgery finished within the last 6 months, and her 16 year old daughter was awaiting her double mastectomy.  They were part of a family of 9 women who had all had breast cancer. They ended up going to the USA, to take part in a genetic study on cancer in families. There stories of how the cancer nurses helped their entire family always struck a chord with me.  Especially at the time as my own daughter was helping me in the classes, and I often thought ' there but for the grace of God go I and my daughter'.

My fifth brush with cancer is again close to home, the love of my life Ian, my second husband.  When I told my two children that their step-father had been diagnosed with Prosate cancer - they both though it was a cruel joke.  He has been though Radical Radiotherapy, and that did not work.  He had cryptherapy, and that seems to have done the trick for now - we hope and pray, for the day when he is officallly in remission. 

My sixth brush with cancer is my stepson Angus who is currently fighting an horrendous battle with PNET cancer, a very rare cancer indeed.

I saw the notice about the World's Biggest Coffee Morning, and as it was on the exact day of my 50th birthday last year and I knew what I wanted to do. Again this year I want ot raise more money.

 

This year i am doing breakfast and the coffee morning, and for the next 5 years I want to have great fun with all my friends and family raising money for Macmillan Cancer Support the World's Biggest Coffee Morning at the Wacton Village Hall, Hall Lane, Wacton, NR15 2UH, Norfolk UK, at 6. 00 am through till about 2.00 pm.

Whatever you can give, if your life has been touched by a friend, a family member, a work mate, any one who has passed through your life, who has had cancer, for them please donate, go to a coffee  morning, do what you can, give as much as you can. Every penny and pound help, nothing is too small, and thanks from me to you, and lets hope the numbers start turning, where those that survive, are more, than those that died. I have lost 4, I intend to not let it be 5 or 6.