Maggie's 10,000 steps for cancer

AN OSSETT mum is urging people to step up for Cancer Research UK’s latest fundraising challenge, Walk All Over Cancer.

Maggie Keane, 52, is urging people to follow her lead and sign up and get sponsored to walk 10,000 steps every day throughout June, in support of the charity’s live-saving research. The mum of two completed the 10,000 steps per day challenge in March this year and raised almost £300 for the charity. Maggie, who is a business development manager at Yorkshire Building Society in Bradford, lost her mum and her best friend to cancer.

She had already taken part in a number of Race for Life events and done Dryathlon twice as well as other fundraising activities, but when she saw the information about Walk All Over Cancer, she felt it was ‘right up my street’. Maggie’s mum, Marie McGinty, was diagnosed with cancer in 2001, aged 62.

“She had what we all thought was a verruca under her little toe for about nine months, but it just kept getting worse and had grown so much,” explains Maggie. Eventually Marie was referred to a dermatologist at Dewsbury Hospital, who diagnosed it as malignant melanoma, the most serious form of skin cancer, and at the worse grade it could be.

“Mum had surgery to remove the growth, along with one of her toes and part of her foot.

“She was in a wheelchair for some time but then recovered and was doing well.”

But towards the end of 2004, the family all started to notice Marie’s behaviour started to change. After a regular visit to the optician, she was referred to her GP following abnormalities in the ‘puffer test’ on her eyes. And with Marie’s cancer history, the GP sent her for a CT scan who revealed the terrible news that she had three inoperable brain tumours. She under went radiotherapy and chemotherapy, to give her some extra time with her family. But she died surrounded by her family in January 2006 – just a few weeks after Maggie lost her best friend to cancer, aged 40.

Cancer Research had been Maggie’s chosen charity for a number of years after losing her mum, her best friend and also her friend’s son to cancer, but also in celebration of her brother Joe and other close friends who have beaten cancer.

“Cancer Research UK has always been important to me because I know how research helped give us that extra year with our mum.”

Based on the average person’s strides, 10,000 steps equates to approximately five miles or eight kilometres per day and adopting small lifestyle changes can go a long way towards achieving the goal. Keeping check on the number of steps taken each day has never been easier, with many smartphone health apps, pedometers and wearable activity trackers helping to keep tabs on physical activity.

For more information visit www.cruk.org/walkallover