Page 287 - She's One Crazy Lady!

I felt it important to share this with you for it helped me so much and made me realise, more than ever, that what we were doing with Crazy Hats really was needed. There must have been thousands of people who would have benefited from being at that Conference.
Through the Conferences I
attended, there were spin offs and
I was invited to talk about what
we were doing at other National
Cancer Charity Conferences and
events. I did a few and they were
well-received but realistically I felt
they saw what we were doing as
an excellent way of raising money
for themselves – so much so that I
was offered a job to do what I was doing in the Eastern Region of the country, taking in five counties! I immediately told them it wouldn’t work as they would need five of me – that just covering Northamptonshire was more than enough and, as a Northamptonshire born and bred person, I was determined that what we were doing would be for North- amptonshire people. It was flattering to think I could have moved on to this kind of well-paid employment but I didn’t waiver, especially when I asked one of the people who offered me a position some questions:
Had he ever fundraised himself? Had he ever been approached by an elderly lady who openly said she had recently lost her daughter to breast cancer and wanted to buy a pin badge but only had twenty pounds that week to live on? (A true story. I had offered to give the lady a badge but she wouldn’t hear of it and put her one pound into the pot.)
“No”, he hadn’t done any fundraising like this – so ‘No’ – I didn’t want that job!
At one of the Cancer Support Group meetings I was to meet Pat Young, a lymphoedema nurse who had been appointed at KGH. Whilst chatting afterwards she told me she had been a breast care nurse at Walsall Manor Hospital where they had a very pro-active group of volunteers who, since 1983, ran a charity to raise funds for them. They also ran a very successful support group. Every member had had breast cancer. They worked closely with the breast care nurses to offer support to the patients, even having their own room within the department where patients could go either before or after appointments, to be given time to discuss things that were troubling them or to ask for more clarification – all over a cup of tea and a piece of cake. The group arranged for flowers to be delivered to newly diagnosed patients too. The volunteers, if needed, were also allowed to go into appointments
“
Had he ever been
approached by
an elderly lady
who openly said
she had recently
lost her daughter
to breast cancer
and wanted to
buy a pin badge
but only had
twenty pounds
that week to live
on? ”
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