This event is being held in support of our very much loved friend and colleague Cathy Gaughan, WCTL in St Annes. Cathy has recently been diagnosed with Stage 4 Breast Cancer. Her cancer has spread to other parts of her body. She is currently undergoing chemotherapy and despite all of this remains incredibly brave and positive. 

Cathy has always supported this particular charity. Her reasons for doing so are here in her words: “Thanks so much for carrying on raising money for this wonderful charity, as promised here’s a bit of background on how I got involved. My eldest daughter had her first seizure the day after her 18^th birthday, we saw a neurologist who said that it could be a one off episode brought on by stress as she had just finished her A-levels, he even said that we should go on our planned holiday to Florida.  On our second day in Florida she suffered multiple seizures and was admitted to hospital. Back home she was diagnosed with a brain tumour the position of which made it impossible to biopsy ,so we were told that all we could do was monitor with MRI scans to see if it grew.  We set about our own research which showed that 70% of people diagnosed with a brain tumour would not live beyond 12 months, it was an horrendous position for a young girl to be in and the only support and source of information we found was through the Brain Tumour Research Charity. Almost ten years on my daughter is working in her dream job having studied politics at university, she is scanned every 12 months but has been stable and can therefore be assumed to have a benign tumour.  She will always have to be monitored and will always have to take anti seizure medication but she is one of a very small percentage of people to have such a positive outcome. Brain tumours kill more children and people under the age of 40 than any other cancer and yet struggle to get funding for research, I have been supporting them for the last 10 years and staff at St Annes Jobcentre have been unbelievably generous with the annual Wear a Hat event. Thanks again and here’s hoping for a very successful event.” Cathy