As I’ve previously mentioned, I was raised with very strong female role
models to look up to. I think I may have found another in my very lovely fellow
Cancer Research UK Ambassador, Rosa MacPherson. I would like to thank Rosa for allowing
me to share her incredible story with you all – this has certainly been of the
most interesting blog posts I have ever written.
Rosa was born in Alloa to Polish parents who had been repatriated to
Scotland after World War Two. Although they were both only in their twenties,
they had already endured slave labour, imprisonment, almost starved under
Stalin and faced the constant threat of exile to Siberia. Rosa’s parents had
only known each other for six weeks when they married and faced such testing
and tragic things together at such young ages.
Going through such injustice shaped the way Rosa’s parents raised their
children. Rosa, her brother and her three sisters were brought up to answer
back if they needed to. They were all born with Polish as their first language
and a divided sense of identity – were the Scottish or were they Polish?
Most of Rosa’s family were trapped on the other side of the Iron Curtain
and were uncontactable at the time. In fact, the first time Rosa ever saw a photo
of her aunt Patycja was in her open coffin after she sadly passed away from
womb cancer. Patycja refused a hysterectomy on religious grounds.
Rosa grew up to become a teacher, a writer and a political activist. She
met her husband when she was nineteen and became a mother for the first time
when she was twenty three. Her son is named Georgie - which clearly
demonstrates Rosa’s superb taste!
Like me, Rosa has also watched so many loved ones battle cancer. Her
mother, like her aunt, developed womb cancer. She had a hysterectomy after a
Polish priest came to her house and gave her permission. Close friends of Rosa
and George were both tragically diagnosed with cancer around the same time. They
were a married couple living in Germany; the husband sadly passed away after
being diagnosed with brain cancer that has spread to most of his vital organs
but his wife survived breast cancer.
Rosa’s father passed away after suffering from heart disease, diabetes
and gangrene caused by sixty years of heavy smoking. Tragically six months
later Rosa lost her husband George very soon after he was diagnosed with
lymphoma. Rosa says: “This is a horror I have still not managed to leave
behind. To watch someone you love retreat further and further from life and for
them to know that, and be horrified by it, and to be so scared of dying. It was
almost unendurable.”
As for Rosa herself; she began smoking when she was thirteen and thought
it was very glam and “movie starish”. She smoked up until 10th
January 2007. She lost many people to cancer and even has pre cancerous cells
removed from her cervix (which may have been caused in part by her smoking
according to the specialists) but couldn’t quite kick the habit. She wondered
if she would be one of the lucky ones but unfortunately two years after she
quit smoking, Rosa was diagnosed with uterine cancer, just as her mum and aunt
had been.
Rosa underwent a radical hysterectomy, the removal of her cervix and
ovaries and immediate menopause. She credits early diagnosis as the reason why
she managed to survive but like her dad, she wishes she had quit smoking
earlier.
The following quote comes
directly from Rosa and explained how her life has shaped her and why she became
a cancer campaigns ambassador:
“I’m sharing my story to try and show
that when we’re debating measures like plain packaging, and when we’re
balancing public health benefits with tobacco industry profits, we’re talking
about real people, real families. People like me.
Why did I become a Cancer Research UK
Ambassador? Because it’s a fight we will win. There is a battle going on, with
tobacco companies, with other drugs and chemicals that is threatening to
destroy us as a species. Cancer has gotten hold because humanity is in such
need of the very attributes that CRUK harnesses and fosters in its campaigners.
CRUK believes in what is right. It raises its own money, it harnesses the unique,
amazing power of individuals, and joins them together in a battle to beat the
odds. It takes on each obstacle with planning, determination, passion and
unbeatable spirit. And the spirit’s the thing. It’s being part of a global
family that is using its compassion, insight and sense of humanity to transform
the planet from a place of war with cancer to a place of hope, cooperation and
life affirming joy. Who wouldn’t want to be a part of that?”
Rosa has just completed her MA
in Creative Writing at Edinburgh Napier University and is now working free
lance as a writer. She is hoping to have her first novel completed by the Autumn 2013 and I
will be first in line for a copy!
I, for one, am very glad to be able to
get to know Rosa as part of my ambassador family and can safely say we definitely
have a warrior on our side in the fight against cancer. Rosa, you are my new
heroine! Xxx
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