The terror at finding a lump on or near your breast is indescribable quickly followed by denial and disbelief in what the tips of your fingers have felt. It took less than two weeks from that heart stopping moment to discover that my lump was in fact a fatty deposit. The relief I felt on being given the all clear was immense and I decided that I wanted to give something back as a way of saying thank you.
Breast Cancer Care is funded entirely through donations and fund raising, it provides a care and support service to breast cancer sufferers from being there on the end of the phone in the middle of the night to advising you how to tie a headscarf to hide your bald head as all your hair has fallen out as result of your treatment.
My first involvement with the charity was through the ribbon walk a 20 mile walk through the Oxfordshire countryside starting and finishing at Blenheim Palace the target was to raise £250 in sponsorship. I took part in this event for two years, then my husband left me and my world changed again.
Cuba had long held a fascination for me partly from reading about it in the novels of Graham Green and Hemingway but also from a historical point of view with the glamorisation of Che Guevera through the media. The opportunity to visit this fascinating country arose when I decided to up my game and join the trip that Breast Cancer Care was organising a coast to coast trek across the Escambray Mountains. The target was to raise a minimum of £3000 and be fit enough to cope with this challenging trek through remote and rarely visited regions of the island.
Raising the money was not as hard as I expected, friends and family and the toyboy were very generous in their donations. Dinner parties became a variation of “come dine with me” complete with voiceover man and guests taking on the roles of bitchy characters and paying for the privilege! Training for the trek was tougher than I had expected with my rucksack full of weights I set off in all weathers and tried to increase the distance I walked every week. However an injury to my leg which then got infected three months before I left stopped me training and nearly caused me to cancel my place.
The trip was everything I hoped for and more, the other trekkers were just fabulous, feisty and fun. Makeup took on a new dimension when you found which eyebrow pencil was the best one to use to pencil in your eyebrows that had fallen out through chemotherapy Benefit apparently! Cubans have a laid back attitude to life and we all adapted very quickly to Cuban time. The scenery was stunning, lush vegetation sheltered you from the hot midday sun and the cool bathing pools under the cascading waterfalls soothed our aching legs after trekking up steep mountain ridges. Cuba does not have any fun fairs to be honest they don’t need them our daily truck ride in the evening to our next campsite was a white knuckle ride and when the headlights failed the driver got out a torch! Our reward for 5 days trekking for 7-9 hours a day was a twenty four hour stay in glamorous hotel on a white sandy beach where we found out at the gala night dinner that our little group had raised £57,000 for Breast Cancer Care with more money coming in! Would I do it again certainly only next time its Costa Rica where you have to hack your way through the jungle! Care to join me?
By Julie Pritchard (greeneyedblonde)
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