We are absolutely delighted to have been awarded a Support Group Start-up Grant from Macmillan Cancer Support. This grant will help us reach more of our community and ensure that we can help as many people as possible.

Our support group started in June 2014 thanks to a grant from Croydon Council and it’s facilitated by a trained counsellor, Hazel Williams. The group provides an informal, friendly environment to connect with people who have been affected by cancer, share experiences and learn how to cope with a cancer diagnosis.

Our support group members have found the sessions to be very useful and have said the following about the group:

“The facilitator was very insightful and had a lot of meaningful things to say. She gave me a lot to think about.”

 

“The relaxation and mindfulness session was really useful.”

 

“I was feeling very down and really wasn’t going to attend but I am glad that the organisers called me and picked me up. I found the session to be very useful and I am so glad that I came.”

The group meets on the first Wednesday of the month from 4pm – 6pm at 3Space in Croydon. If you’d like more information about our support group or would like to attend please email us at info@thelakefoundation.com or call 07440 146 645.

We’d like to say a big thank you to Macmillan Cancer Support, we really appreciate their support and look forward to putting this grant to good use.

In this week’s blog Abi Begho discusses her Walk to Work  Week challenge.

Last week was Walk to Work Week and I got involved by walking part of my journey to and from work all last week. This was a great opportunity to get some much-needed exercise and I was amazed at just how much I was able to achieve by making some very simple changes to my journey to work.

I started off on Monday 11^th May. I was heading to central London and decided to substitute the 7 minute tram journey from Addiscombe to East Croydon train station with a lovely early morning walk.  This was a great way to start the morning, it took about 25 minutes and along the way I had the opportunity to see my neighbourhood in a whole new light; the lovely houses, the cute kids heading to nursery and the shopkeepers getting ready for a day of trading.  When I got to East Croydon Station a quick glance at my pedometer completely shocked me, I had racked up 3,977 steps! Whey hey!

During the rest of the day I made a conscious effort to walk as much as I could so I walked to meetings, took a walk at lunch time, walked up stairs and walked some of my journey back home. At the end of the day a final glance at my pedometer informed me I had walked 12,087 steps! I was  very pleased as the recommended number of steps we should take a day is 10,000.

The rest of the week was much the same although some days were not so good. I peaked at 15,173 steps on 12^th May due to a trip to Birmingham that saw me doing a lot of walking as I opted to walk between train stations and skip the taxis and walk to and from my meeting. My low point was a terrible 3, 268  steps on the last day of Walk to Work Week. On this day I was working close to home and because I was carrying my heavy laptop I jumped on the tram, but I did walk up 5 flights of stairs!

I really enjoyed my little Walk to Work Week experiment and I’ve decided to introduce more walking into my commute to work. I’ll be skipping the tram and walking to East Croydon station from now on. I’m going to force myself to do 10,000 steps a day.

We’re so excited to once again team up with the Cycling Instructor with support from Croydon Council to provide free cycling sessions over the summer. This is a fun way to get fit and active and can be a journey of discovery of the beauty of south London as we cycle through the many hidden green spaces along route 21.

This group has been organised as part of our drive to improve the health and wellbeing of the black community and it aims to: provide members with the opportunity to learn how to cycle; provide tips on cycling technique; improve confidence in cycling; prepare attendees for road cycling; and introduce an enjoyable way for people to get some exercise.

Last year we had a great time with our sessions being led by very experienced and friendly instructors from the Cycling Instructor. Our favourite sessions were the off-road cycling sessions where we discovered beautiful locations like South Norwood Country Park, the Waterlink Way and Riverpool Linear Park.

We’ll be starting on 3^rd July at 6pm at Croydon Arena.  Please do get in touch if you’d like to join us. You can email events@thelakefoundation.com  to book your place and to find out more. Our leaflet below also provides more details.

Friday is World Ovarian Cancer Day and this gives us the perfect opportunity to focus on a disease that gets very little attention.

In the UK, ovarian cancer is considered to be a rare cancer with 7,000 new cases diagnosed every year.  For those affected the statistics are unfairly bleak with only 43% of patients surviving for at least five years compared to 85% of breast cancer patients.  We can improve this by raising awareness of the signs and symptoms of ovarian cancer and ensuring that women and healthcare professionals take quick action should they recognise the symptoms.

Increased awareness leads to more patients being diagnosed at an early stage and early diagnosis does save lives;  92% of women diagnosed at an early stage will go on to live beyond 5 years.

Black women are less likely to develop ovarian cancer than white women but data does suggest that black women are more likely to be diagnosed at a late stage so raising awareness in the black community is very important.

So, this World Ovarian Cancer Day join the global movement to raise awareness by pledging to tell five women about the symptoms of ovarian cancer.

To sign the pledge and get more information visit the World Ovarian Cancer Day website and for more information about ovarian cancer please visit Ovarian Cancer Action’s website.

We’re currently working on developing a fibroids booklet to address some of the issues that came out of our fibroids survey last year. From the survey we found that:

• There was a general low level of awareness of fibroids amongst participants prior to their diagnosis.
• There was a good level of awareness of the main symptoms of fibroids but a low level of awareness of other symptoms.
• Participants were aware that ethnicity was a risk factor for fibroids but less aware of other risk factors.
• 80% percent of participants stated that they needed information but only 53% said that this was available to them.
• 63% of women said they didn’t feel that they had enough information to make an informed decision about their treatment

In addition to the above some participants stated that their biggest challenge in managing their condition was the lack of information and conflicting information about fibroids. For example, one participant said, “there is not enough information, particularly with regards to surgery alternatives and diet changes.”

What our booklet will cover

Our booklet will provide much-needed information on all aspects of fibroids. It will cover the symptoms of fibroids allowing women to quickly pick up on the possibility that they might have fibroids ensuring an early diagnosis which may mean less invasive treatment, the prevention of unnecessary pain and avoiding loss of fertility. It will also raise awareness of the risk factors and provide information on what changes women can make to their lifestyle to reduce their risk of developing fibroids and it will help women identify whether they are at a high risk of developing fibroids and therefore whether they should be more vigilant about recognizing symptoms and changing their lifestyle to reduce their risk. Finally, it will also cover treatment options so women are aware of what options are available to them.

We appreciate all those who have helped so far

We’re delighted to have had some excellent reviewers work with us. We would like to say a big thank you to Dr Nigel Hacking, Consultant Interventional Radiologist at Southampton University Hospital and Miss Rosol Hamid, Consultant Obstetrician & Gynaecologist and Head of Women Services at Croydon University Hospital for providing very useful and helpful comments and suggestions.  Additionally we’d also like to thank The Brielle Agency for proofreading our work .

We need your help for the final review

Now we are looking for members of the public to read the final draft before it goes off to our wonderful designers, Adinqra, and provide us with feedback on what needs to be improved. If you’d like to help please contact us on info@thelakefoundation.com

We are absolutely delighted to welcome Dr Nigel Hacking to our fibroids Ask the Expert Panel. Dr Hacking is a Consultant Interventional Radiologist at Southampton University Hospital in the UK and specialises in Uterine Fibroid Embolisation (UFE). He was one of the pioneers of UFE and has one of the largest experiences in the world. He set up and runs both UK Fibroid Experts and Fibroid Caribbean and performs UFE in the UK at Southampton and London as well as in Trinidad and Nairobi.  He also helps train Interventional Radiologists from the UK and overseas to set up their own services. He has published in peer reviewed journals and has recently edited a textbook entitled ‘Radiological Interventions in Obstetrics and Gynaecology’.  For over 10 years he has spoken at most of the most prestigious Interventional Radiology conferences around the world each year on Fibroid Embolisation and other topics.

We are delighted to have him on board and if you have any questions about fibroids please do submit them to our panel here

As a small charity with limited resources communications and PR can be a challenge, but it is important.  We completely understand the power of an effective communication and PR strategy in helping us reach our community with key health messages particularly around cancer and fibroids, our two main focus areas at the moment. With this in mind when we heard about Find a Cure’s workshop on ‘Communications and PR for Small Patient Groups’ we jumped at the opportunity to attend.

This workshop was held today and didn’t disappoint. It was an excellent workshop with very useful presentations from experts in the field of communication. In the first presentation, delivered by Sorsha Roberts, Online Communications Officer at the AKU Society, we learnt of the importance of social media for patient groups. Sorsha highlighted the statistics around the use of social media stating that a significant number of people were using social media to find health information and that 90% of people who found health information on social media trusted it and would use it. Furthermore Facebook is the fourth trusted source of health information and this is because information is delivered in a way that is less clinical, it’s clear, easy to understand and it’s delivered in a friendly and informal environment.

We then moved on to our next speaker Stefania Rucci from  Say Communications who spoke about ‘Working with the media’. This was a very informative presentation where Stefania started with an overview of some of the challenges small charities face in getting noticed in the media. These challenges included: competition with other health messages, the media having its own agenda which may not align with a charity’s agenda and small charities have fewer resources making it hard to break through in the media.  Despite these challenges it is possible to mount a successful media campaign but it needs some planning and the adoption of some key principles. These include: developing a compelling a story; getting to know your media and aligning your agenda with theirs;  targeting media to ensure high impact and high relevance; positioning your organisation as the expert; and always being ready . Additionally Stefania said it was important to produce great content, understand your audience, understand the different types of media (specialist,  national papers, local papers, magazines, TV, radio, bloggers and social media) and tailor your content to fit different types of media, i.e. be able to tell your story in a different way so it appeals to different audiences.

We were recently asked about breast implants and mammograms and in today’s blog we thought we’d address this.

A mammogram is an X-ray that is used during the breast screening process to detect breast cancer at a very early stage and hence aims to give women with breast cancer the best chance of survival.  During a mammogram X-rays are passed through the breast in order to generate images (radiographs) of each breast. If a tumour, cyst or calcium deposits are present this will be detected as bright spots on the radiographs.

Image credit: Prague Beauty

When a woman has a breast implant (breast augmentation/ enlargement), the implant is inserted between her breast tissue and chest muscle or behind her chest muscle.  The implant may make a mammogram less effective at detecting breast cancer as it prevents the X-rays from penetrating the tissue properly and hence distorts the image. This can be overcome by a slight modification in the way in which the mammogram is performed which will allow as much of the breast tissue as possible to be visualised by the x-ray.