A woman who shaved her head in solidarity with her mum after a devastating cancer diagnosis has handed over more than £3,000 to a leading local charity.
Jess Grant was supported by family, friends and colleagues at Arco in Hull after her mum Dawn was found to have metastatic breast cancer. Dawn died just three weeks after the diagnosis but Jess pressed on with the fundraising to support the Daisy Appeal and help other people who have serious illnesses.
Jess said: “Mum’s cancer was very advanced and could not be cured so to show support and build awareness of this terrible disease that rips so many families’ lives apart I decided to shave my head.
“They say cancer will affect one in every two people during their lifetime. That’s a shocking statistic and if the Daisy Appeal is about one thing it’s saving local lives and keeping our loved ones with us for longer.
“They help to improve the survival chances of thousands of people each year and give users of their services and their families a brighter future.”
Jess lives at Thorngumbald with her husband Christopher Burnby and their children Leo (8), Jack (7) and Daisy (4).
One of her work colleagues, Ria Rylatt, is a trained hairdresser and set to work with her clippers on the eve of Dawn’s funeral. Adam Power, Jess’s team leader, also took the chair to get his head shaved as well.
More money came in from a bun sale and non-uniform day at Jess’s children’s school and from colleagues at Arco staging their own series of “Great British Bake Off” events. With Jess’s employers topping up the fund she was able to present the Daisy Appeal with more than £3,000 when, wearing her wig, she visited the site at Castle Hill Hospital with Adam.
Jess said: “When the doctors told Mum she would lose her hair I said straight away I would shave mine off as well. At the time I wasn’t even thinking about doing it for charity, it was just to support Mum. But I decided to fundraise for the Daisy Appeal because it also has links to dementia and heart disease. It’s also Hull-based and helps people from our region.
“My mum passed away just three weeks after her diagnosis but I wasn’t going to stop. I shaved my head the day before her funeral. If I commit to doing something I got for it and just keep going.
“I’m really grateful to everybody who donated and especially to everybody at work. We are all really close at work and I spoke about my Mum in our team huddle so they knew how poorly she was and they were brilliant. I wasn’t expecting to raise anything like the amount we achieved. I set a target of £500!”
Claire Levy, Fundraiser for the Daisy Appeal, said: “We just want to say a huge thank-you to Jess and everybody who supported her for their remarkable effort.
“In the midst of such an incredibly difficult and painful personal experience she made a commitment to help others and she stuck to it, generating much-needed funds to help us in our work and also raising awareness of what we do.”
Since its foundation in 2002 the Daisy Appeal has raised more than £22m. The Daisy Appeal Medical Research Centre opened on the Castle Hill Hospital site in 2008 and was followed, in 2014, by the opening of the Jack Brignall PET-CT Scanning Centre, housing the first in a new type of Siemens scanner in the country.
The MIRC has been built at a cost of £8.8m and will become operational later this year.
To find out more please visit https://daisyappeal.org/
