Why I am fundraising...
During 2016, my wife Helen and I attended an Education Seminar on lung diseases, and during the seminar, we were all asked if we could “organize a walk”, to raise funds for research into Lung Cancer. Already in a walking group, I volunteered. Having been motivated by this, I had organized a “Shine a Light on Lung Cancer” walk for many years since then.
This was the beginning of a long association with the Lung Foundation, organizing local historical walks to raise money for research into Lung Cancer and other lung diseases, and to spend three days at the Mitcham Shopping Centre selling Lung Foundation merchandise and promoting the work of the Lung Foundation in Australia.
In the past few years, I have created a webpage because I wanted to make a difference, and this remains uppermost in my mind. I can help to raise much needed funds for research into Lung Cancer by organizing historical walks in Mitcham, South Australia. My wife has Lung Cancer, friends of ours have lung cancer, and we have lost friends to Lung Cancer. And now I have lost my wife too.
Helen died very early in the morning of January 21st, 2022.
While my wife was alive, we had a video made, which can be seen at the address below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIAKnsaJYUY&list=PLx5RMZtuxzUQ_sbRFIrH-WAqzgV91VY8-&index=6&t=0s
Where there is light, there is hope. Please support me and donate today. You will make a difference.
My Achievements
Signed up!
Received first donation
Received 10 donations
50% Goal Achieved
Reached Goal
Increased Target
My Updates
Do you know what this is like? Have you experienced the deep, stabbing pain that occurs when a loved one tells you that he or she had just been diagnosed with Lung Cancer? It is devastating!
I lost my wife to Lung Cancer in 2022, but initially this deep, stabbing pain did not “hit” me, the realization I had lost my wife and I would never see her, talk to her, kiss or hug her, or have here with me in any way ever again.
This is how my wife found out that she had been diagnosed with Lung Cancer - “I was about to leave home to take my granddaughter to playgroup when the telephone rang. It was my GP. “It’s not emphysema, its cancer,” she said. I was stunned. How could I have lung cancer when I’d never smoked even one cigarette? My enjoyable retirement life had suddenly crashed.” This was on the 29th of August.
My wife recorded at this time that she “felt numb and then sick. This couldn’t be right. I’d presumed I’d inherited a longevity gene. Upon hearing the news, our two adult sons rushed over to our place, and as a family we discussed the diagnosis and its consequences. Our extended family and friends were similarly shocked and in disbelief.”
For just over ten years, my wife’s cancer was under control, but then came the last few months.
She went, gradually to begin with, to rapidly at the end, from a healthy, active woman to one completely bed-ridden and completely dependent on me. Then on the 14th of January 2021, she said to me that as we “had done all that we could”, it was time to go to the Laurel Hospice at the Flinders Medical Centre, so this is what we did the next day.
We had indeed done all that we could, as six days later, very early in the morning, my lovely wife died.
At first, the realization did not “hit” me that our marriage of 52 years had just ended, and that I would never see my lovely wife again. When it finally did, I felt a void in my heart that will never leave me, it will continue to “stab me in my heart with the most intense violence”, which has reduced me to abject tears repeatedly.
For your sake, I very sincerely hope that this does not happen to you.
Research into Lung Cancer is urgently needed, and as I unfortunately know the “gut-wrenching” aftermath, I have set up this page. Please think about this, it is devastating to lose a loved one to Lung Cancer. With research, we can stop Lung Cancer.
Richard Irving.
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