Dorothy Markham on being a Community Champion
Dorothy Markham was diagnosed with bladder cancer in 2016 when she was 80 years old. Since then, she has played a pivotal role in raising awareness of the disease in the community. Upon diagnosis, she was shocked at the lack of information for the public on bladder cancer, so she decided to get in touch with Andrew Winterbottom, founder of Fight Bladder Cancer. He gave her knowledge and insight on how she could raise awareness and work with Fight Bladder Cancer.
Four years ago, she set up the Scottish steering group, which gave her an excellent opportunity to move forward with Fight Bladder Cancer. With Dorothy leading the way, the steering group has gone from strength to strength, and they recently managed to get Fight Bladder Cancer registered as an official charity in Scotland.
She is passionate about making change for patients because the disease is “overlooked.” She said, “It’s not fair. So much work remains to be done to bring bladder cancer improvements up to speed in Scotland and the UK. My determination to campaign and make the world a better place remains unwavering.”
Dorothy has been an asset to Fight Bladder Cancer and the people of Scotland since deciding she wanted to improve the lives and standards of those fighting the disease. From organising educational awareness stalls to contacting MSPs, we spoke to her about some of the community work she has been involved with over the years.
“As for raising awareness of bladder cancer, although it is good to have a month to focus on raising awareness, I feel that we need to raise awareness throughout the year.
The two events we try to do yearly are the Falkland Bladder Cancer Awareness Walk and an awareness stall in the Gyle shopping centre in Edinburgh. John Smith, who had bladder cancer 20 years ago, has always coordinated the walk, becoming an annual event for patients, carers, and the Falkland community.
The stall at the Gyle shopping centre in Edinburgh was arranged with Danielle Marr and supported by patients, families and friends. This, too, has been a very successful event because we added an attraction for children, which brought their parents to the stall. In the first year, we had face painting. This year it balloons, which we did not charge for, but most parents gave a small donation and were interested in what we were doing. As part of the team, I feel that we support and coordinate events, especially the walk, where we try to make it a bit different by having a picnic afterwards. This allows participants to get together, making the walk a social event.
We have had other events outside May. A local Indian restaurant does a charity night on a Monday. They return half of the price of the meal to FBC. We also did a raffle to increase the sum we raised. This was not possible during COVID, but we hope to book an evening later this year.
In 2019, we did a walk through the Royal Mile in Edinburgh to the Scottish Parliament. Whilst we did not see any MSPs on that occasion, it did lead to much public interest both on the walk and when we met outside Parliament. Mr Param Mariappan, Consultant Urological Surgeon at Edinburgh Bladder Cancer Surgery, Western General Hospital, managed to get six other surgeons to attend, and his wife was very active in giving out leaflets.
Our contact with MSPs has been regular, resulting in face-to-face meetings with the Minister for Public Health, Sport and Wellbeing, the Leader of the Lib Dems in Scotland and two MSPs. Over the last three years, we have had regular email contact with Scottish MSPs and regular positive feedback. We have learnt from this the importance of matching information and press releases with issues that interest the devolved government.
This year's meetings with MSPs were Johnson’s meeting with the Cabinet Minister for Health and Social Care and Laura’s meeting with her MSP. Whilst not wanting to take away from either of these very successful meetings, we feel that they were greatly helped by the fact that the Cabinet Minister and the MSP both knew about Fight Bladder Cancer before the meeting as they had received up-to-date information from the press release, which included input from the Scottish Steering Group. We added information relevant to Scotland whilst keeping the background information we all need to be aware of, such as research, statistics and the support offered by FBC throughout the UK. Laura’s constituency MSP had already agreed to sponsor an Event in the Scottish Parliament in Spring 2023.
Whilst planned events are successful in raising awareness throughout the year; we must take every opportunity to talk about bladder cancer daily. For instance, the girls who worked in my hairdressers last year did a short video advertising the need to be aware that changing your pants, as some advertising would have you believe, is not a cure for bladder cancer or other medical causes. The girls who do my nails stopped the traffic the day we stood in the road to take their photos, making a point that young people are interested in the causes of bladder cancer. Both groups of young women work in environments which use carcinogenic chemicals.
I have long discussed having an awareness stall at a music festival. It is certainly something we will explore next year.
We must get to the public, so we save lives; this must be seen as a priority.
I would also like to thank my husband, Don, for making up for my lack of technology knowledge by acting tirelessly as my PA and in the past as my carer. He knows how grateful I am!
Volunteers like Dorothy make Fight Bladder Cancer the charity it is. Her fantastic work has helped so many people, and we hope she inspires others to get involved in the community!
