Mark Butcher

Mark Butcher lost his sister Angela to small cell ovarian cancer in January 2013, just four months after being diagnosed. Angela was determined to raise funds and awareness for this rare type of cancer, so through The Eve Appeal, she and her family set up Angela’s Fund. To date, they have raised an incredible £90,000 which supports The Small Cell Ovarian Cancer Research Project. This project will consolidate the knowledge and experience of patients and clinicians, in order to provide the necessary foundation for effective research into this small cell cancer.

Angela’s Diagnosis:

Unfortunately, it was terminal ovarian cancer, a very aggressive one. There wasn’t really anything doctors or nurses could do. She went in for an operation, unfortunately it had all spread to other organs and things, it was just a case of attempting to have palliative chemo for however long she had left. Upon diagnosis, she had looked online and tried to find out about small cell. There wasn’t really anything there, anything known about it, so she thought ‘I want to start fundraising to help people. It’s not going to help myself, but if it could help people in my situation further down the line, then that is something I really believe in and would like to do.’

Her last Christmas:

She passed away on New Year’s Day, 2013. On Christmas, she was at a hospice, she was adamant to come out, go back to our house, so it was me, my Mum and Dad. We had a really nice Christmas, she was there peeling the vegetables and just having a really good last Christmas. The people at the hospice were worried, she hadn’t turned up at nine o’clock at night, but eventually she wanted to go back to the hospice.

Hope for the future:

We were lucky enough to come across Professor Widschwendter and also The Eve Appeal, which is the UK’s largest gynaecological cancer charity. They have been very supportive and enabled us to use the money we’ve fundraised to be directed to UCLH in London, and Cambridge Genetics Laboratories. Fundraising started in March 2016. We’re ongoing with fundraising, we’re determined to really give people a chance to find out you know, is there a way to not necessarily cure but stop it developing in the first place. It’s all about giving hope, and we just continually fundraise and just really want to help other ladies, their families and friends, so they don’t have to go through something like this.