Page 384 - She's One Crazy Lady!

Our place“
we had tirelessly explored all avenues and visited dozens of possible properties and plots of land that had been recommended, or that we had seen in the paper, or had been sent to us by Estate Agents. We even had our own plans drawn up by an architect friend of mine, Bob, who I had known for years through school, for a suggested ‘ideal’ half acre site. There were several properties that genuinely roused our imaginations and enthusiasm for the ideal dream of having a unique Breast Cancer ‘Haven’ for Northamptonshire could, in reality, happen. However, I knew we did not have the right team or a big enough team of people with the necessary skills to commit to something as ambitious as this. To go bigger would undoubtedly have meant taking on more staff to run and manage the Centre, meaning we would have had to raise even more funds to keep such a place up and running – whilst still giving donations to the hospitals. The workload and responsibility would have been immense.
Today, knowing what we know now, I am so glad we didn’t let our enthusiasm get the better of us. Our place in Sanders Road, however small and cramped it may have been, was our ‘home’ and it worked.
A Centre of Excellence for Breast Cancer Care in the county, putting Northamptonshire on the map, was always a dream...
Early in January 2020 I had personal health issues which were worrying.
In December 2019 we had organised a coach trip for our members to The Royal Albert Hall in London for their popular Carols at Christmas Concert. Marilyn and I had been the year before and had such a fantastic time and knew our members would love it.
We were right! They ‘loved’ it! There were fifty-five of us. To be amongst 7,000+ people, with a full orchestra playing, choirs singing and the organ blasting out, was just magnificent and the mass carol singing – spine-tingling! My sister came and Andrew, her husband, kindly picked us up on our return and took me home. He declared he wasn’t feeling too good – he didn’t sound or look very good! A week later, I joined them for Christmas lunch, and it appeared he was suffering with a really bad cold which wasn’t getting better. Was it just a bad cold? We didn’t think much of it until just a few days later when I came down with symptoms similar to his. Mine was not just a bad cold. This was flu – a very bad case of flu where I was unable get up for a couple of days and I experienced excruciating headaches, overwhelming tiredness, a burning sore throat, a high temperature, loss of voice, loss of appetite and considerable weakness in all muscles and joints – certainly the worst case of flu I had ever experienced. After a couple of weeks when one would think energy levels would have increased, mine hadn’t and I was worried that so many parts of my body, which now included certain organs, were incredibly painful. I hung on to the fact that every day would be a better day but then I heard how many more people were suffering with similar, unexplainable effects of what we all thought were flu. Marilyn also had a terrible cough which lasted for several weeks.
in Sanders Road, however small and cramped it may have been, was our ‘home’
and it work”
ed.
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