Thanks for taking the time to visit our JustGiving page.

Apart from occasional outings, when her pain and sickness permitted, to Reading( the Bensons' home), Devon  (the Jacobs' home), and her own home in Highgate, Torie Benson spent the final five months of her short life in the Marie Curie Hospice, Hampstead. Day and night, 7 days a week, she was under the extraordinary and loving care of its incredible team of nurses, doctors, support staff and volunteers. 

No words can fully describe or explain the exceptional service and support Marie Curie gave Torie as well as to her family and friends during her illness. That love and support continues to this day.  It is a remarkable and truly inspiring place, and offered an environment of security, care, support and love at a terrifying and distressing time.

The Hospice is wholly dependent on charitable donations and fund raising. The cost of caring for an in-patient is £514 per day; Torie spent well over one hundred days in their full-time care. In 2011, the year in which Torie died, it cared for more than 800 patients at a cost of over £5 million.

But these facts and figures alone fail to convey the unstinting love, devotion, support and care that it gives to each and every patient like Torie. Sadly most of you will have been close to someone who has been diagnosed with cancer. To see patients who are scared, sometimes lonely and often traumatised and who by then know that death shortly awaits them, find comfort and often laughter in their final weeks and months was a life-changing experience. It was truly humbling to see at first hand the care that every single person working within Marie Curie provides 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

So we would like to give something back, and help them continue to look after the many others, like Torie, who will undoubtedly need their care and support.

Suzanne Jacobs, my great friend who was very close to Torie in her final year,and I will be taking part in a sponsored trek through North East India organised by, and for, the Hampstead Hospice. Fittingly we leave the UK on May 11 the first anniversary of Torie’s death; for the following 11 days, we will trek through the foothills of the Himalayas to Dharamsala, home of the Dalai Lama.

We all know there are so many good causes out there; so many important fund-raising activities to support, but for us this is exceptional. Your generous help would mean so much to us, to Marie Curie, and to the many future patients who will need its care. Our target is to raise £13,000 each; that being the approximate cost of running the entire hospice for one day. 

Thank you in advance for your kind support; and be prepared to receive dozens of photographs, including some, no doubt, showing two exhausted and haggard women who look vaguely like people you used to know!!!!

With our kind regards

 

Fiona and Suzanne 

Donating through JustGiving is simple, fast and totally secure. Your details are safe with JustGiving – they’ll never sell them on or send unwanted emails. Once you donate, they’ll send your money directly to the charity and make sure Gift Aid is reclaimed on every eligible donation by a UK taxpayer. So it’s the most efficient way to donate - I raise more, whilst saving time and cutting costs for the charity.

So please dig deep and donate now.