A WALK by 18 women from Safety Beach Yacht Club to the Sorrento Hotel on Sunday 29 October will raise funds for the Ovarian Cancer Research Foundation (OCRF).
And they will stand out, too, as all the women will be wearing red Wonder Women t-shirts helping create a “sea of red” on the foreshore near the sailing club at 8.30am.
Organiser Helen Powell said she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer four years ago and has been “living with the disease ever since”.
“Throughout this time I have worked and continued to raise a family through treatment,” she said.
“I have been in awe of the support many of these women have been shown. We did a walk last year as six friends. This year the number has increased to 18.
“Some women who are friends of friends and who I have never met will be walking.”
Ms Powell said the aim of the walk was to raise awareness of the disease and its debilitating effects. “Ovarian cancer has the highest mortality rate of all the gynaecological cancers, due to the fact that there is no early detection test,” she said.
“This means that women like me are not diagnosed until the later stages of the disease: I only had two weeks of vague symptoms.”
Research funds are the only answer, she said, but “so is the importance of community and [the] community of support that other women can bring to each other”.
“Wonder Woman – or man – is not just the person with the disease, it is the community behind them.”
https://give.everydayhero.com/au/helen-79
First published in the Southern Peninsula News – 24 October 2017
