St Clare Hospice is once again hosting its summer fayre – to raise money to help people like 59-year-old Susan Smith.
The family event in the grounds of the hospice in Hastingwood, near Harlow, on Saturday July 13, from 11am to 4pm, will feature games and unlimited bouncy castle fun for children, live entertainment and food in the form of wood-fired pizzas, buttermilk chicken and ice cream.
Fayre-goers can be decorated with glitter art and there will be a selection of stalls selling handmade crafts, plants, home-made preserves and delicious bites.
Susan, from Harlow, who had been a postwoman and black cab driver in her working life, is living with secondary cancer and had been in unbearable pain before a stay on the hospice’s inpatient unit.
She said: “I’d been on the St Clare ‘books’ with the community clinical nurse specialists for a while but not needed much help, but then my pain became unbearable.
“I called Zoe, one of the clinical nurses at St Clare, and she got me an appointment within a day at one of the hospice outpatient clinics.
“I was in such a state – I arrived with no handbag and I hadn’t even brushed my hair!
“I spoke to Dr Arjun and told him the pain was robbing me of everything. He listened to me and I felt heard.”
Susan was admitted to the hospice for pain management that day.
“I walked through the doors into the unit and that was it,” she said. “I can’t tell you the difference it’s made.
“At home I can’t have a shower because the pain of the water on my skin is too much, but here, on the unit, they put me in the big bath and it was just so nice. I washed my hair and then I came back to the room to find face packs and lovely toiletries.”
Susan was discharged and went home, where she dips in to St Clare’s care and support as she needs it.