Marie Curie is a charity that we had little involvement with, until last year. My mum was diagnosed, on Christmas Eve 2015, with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in her neck. 2016 was dominated by hospital appointments for chemotherapy and then radiotherapy. Apart from taxiing my parents to and from her appointments, we all felt rather helpless. Mum’s birthday is on 5 March, so last spring when an advert appeared on my Facebook feed asking for volunteers to collect for Marie Curie in my local town on my mum’s birthday, I applied. It felt like we were doing ‘something’.
Marie Curie has historical links to Mount Vernon hospital in London, where all mum’s treatments took place. Back in 1967 the Marie Curie Hospital, which at that time provided cancer care for women, moved to Mount Vernon: Mount Vernon is now a world-leading cancer research and treatment centre.
Throughout our long hospital visits, Marie Curie ‘popped up’ everywhere: information posters on the walls, leaflets in the stands, volunteers talking to visitors and patients. The vivid yellow Marie Curie daffodils added much needed brightness during those long dark hours of treatment, especially on bad weather days. The leaflets certainly helped me.
So on 5 March 2016 the four of us joined the thousands of people from all over the UK who put on a bright yellow tabard, silly tall daffodil hat and stood in the centre of our local towns, in the pouring rain, hoping that people would give generously and take a daffodil to pin on their coat. The children wore the hats and carried the trays of daffodils, while us parents rattled the cans and smiled at every passer-by until they stopped and donated. And we did really well, raising just under £200 in our two hour slot. It felt a good thing to do. I promised we’d do it again the following year – the weekend just gone – and we did, raising the same as before 🙂
Last year my children felt a bit self-conscious wearing the daffodil hat … my son in particular was nervous about any of his school friends seeing him. This year however, not only did he DEMAND to wear the hat … but he wore it to school yesterday too to show everyone 🙂 He told his class what he spent two hours doing on Saturday. He told them about Marie Curie and what they do to help people who have cancer. On Saturday he was excited when some school friends spotted him! I’m very proud of my son.
It was a fun two hours in the unexpected sunshine and it’s such a worthwhile thing to do. There were several individuals and small family groups fundraising for Marie Curie on Saturday in Hitchin town centre. Between us we raised just under £900. This is a fabulous sum of money that will do so much good – and all we did was give two hours of our time to help raise it. It’s good to give something back. Why don’t you volunteer?
My mum celebrated her 78th birthday on Sunday. She is now cancer free but in the ‘watch and wait’ period where she is being regularly checked. Our family owe a lot to the doctors, nurses and volunteers who helped us through last year. So we look forward to fundraising again next year, and indefinitely thereafter.
