When Joanne and her husband, Andrew, went for their regular medical checkup, never did they think that irregular marks would be found on Joanne’s breast and that a hospital referral would follow. As a healthy 52-year-old, Joanne hadn’t displayed any normal symptoms of breast cancer and she was shocked to discover that the test results came back with an early-stage diagnosis at the start of the summer.
Joanne’s daughter, Jennifer, who studies at St Andrew’s University, was on hand over the summer to help care for her mum in the lead up to the mastectomy in October 2016. Here, Jennifer tells us her story:
“When Mum was first diagnosed, we had quite a logical and rational outlook on how we were going to come together as a family to fight the cancer. Luckily, we caught it in its earlier stages and it happened at the beginning of the summer when I could look after her. The hardest thing to witness was watching Mum being wheeled away for her operation, and not being able to go with her. The operation took five hours, and was the longest wait of my life.”
It was during her mum’s recovery that Jennifer first found out about Walk the Night. Having bought some magazines and treats for her mum, the two were flicking through the pages of the magazine when they came across the ad for Walk the Night. Already keen walkers, Jennifer and Joanne decided that they wanted to take part in the full marathon as a celebration of Jo’s recovery. As Walk the Night is the first event they'd seen that allows men to also take part, Jennifer’s dad also signed up to make it a family challenge.
Jennifer is currently waiting for her mum to recover enough so that she can go back to university in St. Andrews, Scotland, and they can hold their first fundraising event – an afternoon tea party.
When asked why her family wanted to raise money for Breast Cancer Care and Prostate Cancer UK, Jennifer explains: “The support that we received from our local hospital was incredible and we feel like we can call the medical team there our friends. Even though we know that cancer is always there and threatening us, we won’t go down without a fight and let the memories of loved ones go down in vain. We will be taking part as a family to celebrate beating cancer!”