Liskeard’s first ever virtual Relay for Life will be starting at 12 noon tomorrow – and there’s plenty of ways to get involved at home and at a social distance.
One of those ways is by lighting a candle in memory of a loved one – or in solidarity with a friend or relative currently battling cancer. People are being encouraged to collect a candle bag to decorate from Liskeard Co-op if they can, or to simply light a candle when the ’Candle of Hope’ ceremony starts at 10pm.
Relayer Tracey Darke is selling her funky Disco Beads with all profits to go to Cancer Research UK – to have a look at her jewellery, and find out about what all the fundraising teams are up to, look for Relay for Life Cornwall – Liskeard on Facebook.
Meanwhile Della Lavers of the Creative Academy Cornwall is doing a 24-hour ’Quilt-a-thon’ over the Relay weekend. She’s encouraging people to send her their choice of personal message or name, and she’ll embroider it onto a patch to be used in a quilt she’s making over the two days.
Each Relay usually starts off with a Survivors’ lap, when people of all ages who have survived canncer have the honour off starting off the event before everyone else.
Karin Wright of Liskeard would have been doing her first ever Relay event tomorrow at Lux Park: exactly a year ago today, she was diagnosed with breast cancer.
Karin, 66, described the bewildering speed between finding a lump, and receiving the devastating news that not only did she have cancer, but that she would have to have a breast removed.
’When the doctor said cancer, my first words were, am I going to die,’ she said.
’Then when he said mastectomy, I fell to the floor in tears.
’I also had chemotherapy and radiotherapy, and I finished my treatment in December.
’When I think about the last year, it has all been so quick.
’I’m glad to be alive, that’s the only way I can put it.’
Karin said that when she put on her purple Survivors’ T-Shirt today she looked in the mirror and smiled. She’ll be wearing her T-Shirt tomorrow when she does her own Relay laps close to her home, at the Sungirt car park and woods, in Liskeard.
Other Relayers will be doing laps in their gardens and during their daily exercise, and sharing photos on the Relay for Life Cornwall – Liskeard Facebook page.