My mother died on 2 February 1998, from breast cancer - she was 51 years old.
I come from a family of five, me being the youngest, with three older brothers and one sister.
We grew up in and around Dublin and in many ways were a typical Irish family. Our Mother was our rock - her passing left a huge hole in the lives of us kids and my dad. To see her gradually succumb to breast cancer, despite the bravest of fights, left us questioning everything we thought was fair and right with the world.
The anger we all felt ate at me in particular. I threw myself into work with Boyzone and used the madness of our lives to mask the hurt that I was feeling. I found it impossible to comprehend that my Mother had been taken from us.
My Mother came from a generation of women (and men) who were brought up not to make a fuss, not to visit the doctor unless it was really serious and not to discuss 'women's troubles'. When she finally made an appointment to see a specialist about the lump in her breast, it was too late.
This fear and reluctance to check herself was something that not just my mother, not just me and my family but millions of people were and still are guilty of. It was the realization that cancer can be treated if it is diagnosed early enough that drove us to set up the Marie Keating Foundation (MKF).
MKF was formed in 1998 in Ireland with the aim to raise funds to pay for a mobile cancer awareness unit. The first unit went on the road in May 2001 and since then we have added a further two units. Under the banner 'Making Cancer Less Frightening By Enlightening' the units have visited over 5,000 locations in Ireland and given advice to over 150,000 people.
I have been lucky enough to have a great career in the UK so it was only natural that I'd want to spread the great work of MKF into the UK. In 2006 we partnered with Cancer Research UK and have since raised over £3.75 million to finance a further four units there.
The work that the staff and volunteers do on the units in the UK & Ireland is incredibly important. They are often the first port of call for someone with concerns about their health. Only a few days ago I met a lady who had visited one of our units as she was concerned about a lump on her breast. One of the nurses talked to her and helped get her an appointment with a specialist and that specialist confirmed she had breast cancer. The cancer was treated and the lady is in remission. She came to find me to say, 'thank you' but really the thanks goes to all those who have helped, in even the smallest of ways, with the work of Marie Keating Foundation and Cancer Research UK.
Fourteen years on from my Mother's passing I look back and the pain is still there, I've just learnt to live with it. The anger is still there too, as I now know that if my Mother's cancer had been detected early enough, she would still be with us today.
For further information about the Emeralds & Ivy Ball or to purchase a table please call 020 3469 8811 or emailcharlotte.westbrook@cancer.org.uk
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Diet is the cause of cancer, milk and milk products , cheese, butter etc. Cows milk has growth factors which cancer cells thrive on, as has sugar. Goats are a much older species and their milk etc seems to be better, and changes our PH ballance. Taking bicarbonate of Soda to change PH ballance, vitamin D, giving up cows milk, and sugar are the only ways to avert cancer.
It's OK, you have permission to do that, you know.
I'm sure you've read that healers & psychologists have made a study of the process of grieving. The Kübler-Ross model - the five stages of grief - is perhaps the most well-known, though I made a collection of the many mind-states people can get "stuck" in, which amounted to well over sixty (although I included temporary pizza-dependency as part of this!).
One of the stages is anger. From my point of view, you might go look at some of the many alternative medicine sites which expose the profitable sham of standard medical treatments for cancers and other conditions, and how so many patients are told that conditions are "incurable" when working alternative methods are suppressed.. Then perhaps go look at so-called skeptic websites that call "sham" at targeted alternative treatments, whilst conveniently ignoring the inadequacies of their favoured orthodox methods. That might get the anger out.
On a less partisan note, you might find it fruitful (perhaps with help) to immerse yourself fully in each of your indentifiable stages of grief in turn (a time limit for each decided beforehand!), then finally come to terms with displacing them all with memories of your mother in other, happier times.
You are quite correct in what you write, Kate, except that if I gave the impression of meaning to impose in any way, I failed in my intent.
Do you have something more helpful to say, of your own?
I certainly wouldn't want to medicalise a common human emotion.
However, if any reader is uncomfortable with their own experience of grief, there is help to be found, from 'healing' through to psychology & psychiatry (where the answer seems to lie in a pill).
In psychology, the Kübler-Ross model would be the first reference many would quote. You are correct about it's inception, but the theory is widely adopted & adapted in the study of grief and how to cope with it.
It is not the only psychological approach, and has its critics.
Moving on to what Mr. Keating has immersed himself in, an arm of Big Pharma PR, I'm sure he means well, but if he did more research into AltMed (beyond the knocking of skeptic groups that are another branch of Big Pharma PR groupiedom), he might just form the view that he (and many others) have been had.
There's an economic war going on; it has little to do with keeping people healthy or actually curing them, it has a lot to do with keeping people in thrall & making profits from them.
suffering from this horrid disease, and not too forget their families also.
Thankfully medical science are now starting too break the ice regarding
this disease, and hopefully find a cure soon, for all cancers.
Great work by Ronan and others.
wes
Today, man's world is reeling on its last legs. Half the world exists on ignorance, illiteracy, poverty, living in filth & squalor. The developed half is sick with ill health, disease, mental stress, fear, frustration, wracked with crime, alcoholism, drug abuse, perverted & misused sex, broken homes, hopelessness in frustration.
Ronan you are a good person, all the best to you and yours.
I also believe until you lose someone dear to you, grief is so difficult to comprehend. We all cope differently and move forward through the gruelling process at varying speeds.
The MKF is doing a brilliant job of preventing some people having to deal with grief and giving a lot of families a chance to realise and not take for granted what they have before its too late.
So. although its probably been said dozens of times before, you mum didn't die in vain, she has probably saved so many women's lives.