Charity fun day celebrates the life of cancer nurse Sandra

Held to coincide with what would have been Sandra’s 60th birthday as well as the third anniversary of her death, the fun day at Charnock Farm was organised by Sandra’s widower Andrew, her daughter Charlotte, sister-in-law Janet Curtis, nieces Naomi and Hannah Curtis and her sister-in-law Margaret Hartley.

Its 160 invited guests were made up of family members, friends, neighbours and a large contingent of Sandra’s former work colleagues from Rosemere Cancer Centre.

Sandra nursed on Ribblesdale Ward, the cancer centre’s in-patient ward, before taking on a new role as an MSCC co-ordinator (Metastatic Spinal Cord Compression co-ordinator), which involved her working with cancer patients whose cancer had spread to their spine and who needed Sandra to help co-ordinate their treatment between the centre’s oncologists and neurologists.

She took on this full-time job after being diagnosed and treated for cancer herself for a second time.

Sandra was first diagnosed with right-sided breast cancer at the age of 46 in 2009 for which she underwent surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy.

A routine mammogram on her 50th birthday then detected unrelated left sided breast cancer for which she underwent surgery. In 2019, doctors discovered ironically that the cancer had spread to Sandra’s spine and later, to her liver. Sandra died in St Catherine’s Hospice shortly after celebrating her 30th wedding anniversary.

Andrew said: “At the time Sandra died – April 2021 – we were still under Covid restrictions so could only have 30 people at her funeral. Many people who loved Sandra and held her in high esteem for her work never had the closure that attending a funeral and a proper wake brings. It was always our intention to have an event celebrating Sandra’s life and we felt her 60th was the right time.”

The fun day had two raffles, a mega tombola, music and food. Shown throughout the event was a reel of 863 photos of Sandra that Andrew had compiled from family albums.

Andrew, who worked as an assistant store manager for Booths before becoming facilities manager at Lancashire County Council, added: “Our thanks go to everyone who attended for their generosity and to the local businesses that donated raffle prizes.

“Nursing was Sandra’s vocation. When I first met her, she worked in catering but re-trained following Charlotte’s birth. Charlotte was born prematurely and had to spend her first five months in hospital. Sandra was inspired by the nurses who cared for her and worked as an auxiliary nurse at St Catherine’s Hospice before her training.

“After qualifying, Sandra’s calling was cancer nursing. Even when she was ill for the second time and her MSCC role became too much, she worked part-time at Chorley and South Ribble Hospital on the chemotherapy unit. It took the pandemic and being told to isolate as she was clinically vulnerable to stop her.

“The eulogies Sandra received from her colleagues and former patients have been a great comfort to both Charlotte and I. Now things have come full circle and Charlotte is a radiography assistant at Chorley and South Ribble Hospital, often working with its breast unit patients. In her, Sandra’s legacy lives on.”

Rosemere Cancer Foundation works to bring world class cancer treatments and services to cancer patients from throughout Lancashire and South Cumbria being treated at Rosemere Cancer Centre, which is the region’s specialist cancer treatment and radiotherapy centre at the Royal Preston Hospital, and also at another eight local hospital cancer units across the two counties, including that at Chorley and South Ribble Hospital.

The charity funds cutting-edge equipment, clinical research, staff training and innovative services and initiatives that the NHS cannot afford in order to make patients’ cancer journey more effective, comfortable and stress-free.