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Six years ago, in March 2019, my mum became and inpatient at St Luke's Hospice in Sheffield, and remained there for 2 and a half weeks until her death. Prior to this, she was also a weekly day patient at the hospice for 4 months, which she absolutely adored. I got the opportunity to join her on some of her Monday day sessions, and I was just so taken aback by how friendly, helpful and cheerful everyone was.

It's a place that's filled with so much colour, art, creativity and hope, despite everyone who visits or stays there receiving end of life care. Mum was able to have a personalised fun and practical timetable of activities every week including an art class (where she hand dyed silk scarves for me, my sisters and her best friends - I wear mine as a hairband regularly!), a counselling session (where she could talk to someone impartial about coming to terms with her illness), a hot stone massage (which anyone who knew mum knew how much she was obsessed with massages and booking massage blocks at Clarins), a hairdresser (to make people feel more alive and normal), gourmet lunches (again, I don't need to explain because who wouldn't love to have beautiful, fresh food served on a slate plate by a wonderful chef), time to socialise (with others who understood what she was going through) and ambulance transport there and back from home (which saved me, my dad and my sisters one day per week of immense difficulty transporting her between places when she became fully disabled). She also developed early onset dementia secondarily to her brain tumours and clots, and the staff at St Luke’s approached her with compassion, understanding and respect.

This service is offered to people in the Sheffield and surrounding areas, and is honestly incomparable to anywhere else. And this is just the day centre!

Most people do wish to stay in the comfort of their own homes when they're terminally ill, and some also wish to remain in the hospice at the end of their lives. St Luke's has a community care team where they can visit patients at home within the community who would prefer this. Additionally, there are only 20 beds within the inpatient ward, and these are like gold dust, so we were extremely lucky to be able to get a bed and room for mum. All patient rooms are private and in a new wing, and they have the most up to date medical resources, and a chef (mum's favourite part). She got to choose from a menu for breakfast, lunch and dinner and eat her 3 courses to her heart's content until she unfortunately couldn't eat anymore. But little touches like this, and the in house florists, helped her to feel like she was in a hotel rather than a clinical, hospital environment.

Patient care at the hospice really is at the ultimate forefront of the work that they do, and this is so easy to see, even by strangers who come in for fundraising or business meetings.

St Luke's managed to make the worst time of our lives a little bit more bearable, and we're so grateful for everything they did, and so amazed by the incredible people who work there and put a smile on peoples' faces everyday. They even let us bring the pets in to visit mum and they let us throw a belated 3 way birthday party in her room! We can't ever repay the amazing work they did and how they treated mum like the absolute queen she was, but we can help them meet their annual £15million fundraising target so that they can continue to stay open and help as many people and families as possible.

I hope you'll donate if you have any spare money, even just the price of a cup of coffee, as it really is one of the best causes. You don’t know when you or your family may need a similar service, and community, helping each other, and raising awareness is all that we can do in this lifetime.

I hope to carry her legacy and passion for life with me everyday.

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