A WOMAN who watched her grandmother die from cancer is about to start a series of six gruelling challenges to help raise money for a cancer charity.
Liza Nicol’s grandmother, Philomenia Bernie, died just four weeks after her cancer diagnosis.
She said: “Losing her was devastating. She was in a care home and had dementia at the time, she didn’t understand what was happening a lot of the time.
"One day she had a bad fall and ended up in hospital. She got worse and worse and then one day a Macmillan nurse came in to tell my mother and I she had cancer. It was all over her body, in her lungs and kidneys and stomach. She only lasted four weeks after her diagnosis.
“Me and my mum were there when she passed away, it was very very hard to watch, but I am glad I was there with her until the end. Me and my Grandmother were chatting and laughing as my mum was at work, when my mum arrived at the hospital, she looked at both of us and smiled and then she was gone. It was like she was waiting for us both to be there before she died.”
Miss Nicol, 38, will start her year of walking challenges for Cancer Research with a 26 mile trek that starts at the Oval in London on Sunday morning. She will set off with a group of friends and expects to walk for around eight to ten hours.
She said: “I am really excited to get started, I have done a lot of walking for fundraisers in the past and I am training hard. It is really positive, I have lost two and a half stone just from doing this, it has also allowed me to make friends for life.”
Miss Nicol hopes to raise £1,600 for Cancer research and raise awareness of the disease. She also plans to do walks around Windsor and the Jurassic coast in memory of her grandmother, who died in 2013.
She said: “Me and my Grandmother were very very close. She was a hardworking Irish woman, she grew up in a convent in Ireland and moved here at just 16 to work. She was really caring, family was everything to her.”
To donate visit www.fundraise.cancerresearchuk.org
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