I am 75 with fairly long hair. If you sponsor me for Relay For Life, you’re helping to bring about a world where everybody lives longer, better lives, free from the fear of cancer.

I am going to 'Brave the Shave' on 20th February, at Hair Parade, Broadway, Helmshore, Rossendale, later in the year have a table @ car boot sale & aim to beat my total of 40 laps of the track @ Marl Pits sports centre, in Rawtenstall as a survivor of skin cancer.

So, Why do I want to do this. Why is it so dear to my heart?

Because both my Grandmothers died of cancer and my Mother in Law, one of my late husband's cousins is terminally ill with bowel cancer.

I have had cancer on my face and in Dec. 24 the lesion on the side of my right temple had to be cut out under a local anaesthetic. In order to be as sure as possible that the surgeon had got it all it was necessary to make a 3"" long cut from just beyond the corner of my eye to the hairline, but the lab tests showed that he had got it all. It was Bowens disease which in the majority of cases remains inactive, but in my case it had started to spread but he said he had caught it early. For some the spread happens very quickly and more than 1 operation is needed to remove all of it successfully. There was also a smaller lesion on the side of my left temple but that was able to be eradicated with cryosurgery. But for the work mostly funded by Cancer Research I might have had to have that removed surgically too.

Currently I am free of any more suspect areas, but as the damage could have started in early childhood - it wasn't known then that the sun could harm our skins so no sunscreens, it is only because of research that it became known and sun creams were developed but even then not very high factors - it is possible that it could appear in the same place, close to the same place or anywhere else on my body which has been exposed to the sun without a sun cream on it or too low a factor of sun cream on it.

Without research, new techniques and procedures won't happen and lives will be lost. This is my way of saying thank you for past funding which enabled my facial skin cancer to be eradicated.

Please support me in this radical step by donating to my fundraising page.

Together we are beating cancer.

Angela Gregson