Wick mum's cancer research bid
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A WICK mother who nearly lost her partner to a brain tumour is planning to bring pioneering cancer research to the North of Scotland.
Carolyn Pierpont revealed all at a nude-calendar launch on Saturday for her newly established charity Bare All for Brain Tumours.
The 34-year-old hopes to raise £50,000 over the next two years – £25,000 each year – to fund a project which will help narrow down which treatment will be most effective for each individual brain tumour case.
“It’s an investigation into molecular cell growth to find out the exact prognosis and diagnosis that each patient in Scotland can have for brain tumours,” she said. “At the moment it is only happening in the west coast of Scotland because there has been no money to ?expand it.”
The ambitious plan to bring the tests to the North and North-east means that when people are diagnosed with a brain tumour medical professionals can determine which treatment will be most effective.
Due to funding constraints such tests have never before been rolled out nationwide. Carolyn, who nearly lost her partner Mark Toshney to a brain tumour in 2009, plans to change that.
“With the likes of Mark it was by chance that the pathologist in Aberdeen knew the pathologist in Glasgow and he turned around and said. ‘I’ve got a 32-year-old here with a brain tumour I’m going to send you a sample to see if he’s got this certain kind of gene deletion’,” said Carolyn. “If Mark had that in his tumour then it would mean the chemotherapy would be more likely to work.”
In order to get the project under way Carolyn has been hard at work conferring with the nation’s leaders in the field of brain tumour research. She has been working closely with the Beatson West of Scotland Cancer Centre in Glasgow, including honorary consultant Professor Roy Rampling, as well as brain tumour experts such as professor Anthony Chalmers and Dr Willie Stewart.
The starting point for the fundraising was held on Saturday in the Blackstairs Lounge and Bar.
As well as launching the 2012 Bare All for Brain Tumours Calendar – where she roped a group of friends into posing nude in a Calendar Girls-esque photoshoot for the second time – Carolyn also debuted a new fundraising video.
The video is a simple but effective appeal showing how important this research is in keeping loved ones alive and as part of a family.
As well as Carolyn the video stars the couple’s 19-month-old son, Aiden, who was conceived around the time of Mark’s diagnosis and treatment.
The night also marked a handover of fundraising duties from Carolyn to local councillor Gail Ross who is now responsible for events in Caithness and north Sutherland. Gail, who also posed for the 2011 and 2012 calendars, said that she was 100 per cent behind Carolyn’s plan as she lost her father Raymond MacDonaldin 2001 to a brain tumour.
“From the Caithness point of view this is so important because what Carolyn is doing is ground-breaking work,” said Gail. “It really is a forward-looking project.”
Both Gail and Carolyn said key to the success of the night was Vivian Gunn, of Dempster Street, who helped organise the launch. They both said they had been overwhelmed with the support they had received locally after raising £489.
Carolyn, who works as an HSE system manager with Technip in Aberdeen, decided to start fundraising for brain tumour research after Mark (35) collapsed at work and was later diagnosed with a cancerous brain tumour in 2009.
The Montrose-based couple endured a long wait until the tumour was removed in July that year. Mark then underwent treatment that involved chemotherapy and radiotherapy. He currently gets an MRI scan every six months.
Bare All for Brain Tumours is a charity under the umbrella of the Joseph Foote Trust.
