We are all affected by cancer. Too many people have died prematurely because of this disease. Strangely my mother wasn't really one of them. She had fought off many different diseases, some presumed to have been fatal. This was the one that finally got her. Her sister had died of a similar form of cancer many years before. It brooks no mercy and rides roughshod over the strongest, most glorious spirits. As yet there isn't a cure, but good people are searching all the time. Hooray for them.

In the meantime there are those amazing doctors and nurses who give hope and most importantly, quality of life to those unfortunate enough to have been diagnosed. I was with my mother when she was admitted to hospital for the last time. We were at the Royal Marsden in Cromwell Rd West London. She knew it would be tough to get out again. I was crumbling inside as I tried to match her courage at facing a ward bed. I pleaded for a room and for her to be the focus of the whole hospital's attention. She soon put me in my place. There she was a woman, an old woman of 86 years, and a GP who had never done a day's private doctoring in her life. She had seen the formation of the National Health and believed in the vision Beveridge and Bevan brought to the country. And she calmed me on that first morning in the ward by saying, " It's all right darling, I feel I have come home. Full circle if you like. I'd almost forgotten how the NHS comes down to the individual, but it does." 

That was how she began one of her most courageous months since Peter, her husband and my father, died nearly 8 years before. Those professors, doctors, consultants, nurses, ward sisters, ward cleaning staff, hairdressers, catering , EVERYBODY, they were all amazing. And not just to my mother, to all the mothers and daughters and sisters and brothers, fathers ad sons who come through their doors. They don't discriminamte, they just care. 

That's why I support them now and will do for as long as I'm around. 

I haven't set a target amount that I want to raise, because I will be happy with anything that you are prepared to give. The Marsden don't waste their money, they spend it where it's needed.

Please GIVE GENEROUSLY

 

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