🐣 Donate to The Easter Egg Drive for Children's Cancer Ward at KCH 🐣

Unmask cancer is a charity that has been set up to provide free services and support for those affected by cancer whether warriors have just been diagnosed, are going through treatment or are in remission and their families.

Through our founder's own cancer experience and during her years in remission she had noticed so many!

Jo is someone who has been through the hell that is chemotherapy and the side effects it can bring on. 

We plan to create chemo kit bags full of things to help ease with some of the side effects, products to help pass the time during your appointment as you can often be there for 9 or more hours and practical items to help keep track of appointments, medications, notes for your oncologist and some comforting products.

Having to travel to and from life-saving treatment can be very expensive. 

Many hospitals do not have many parking spaces and you never know how long you're going to be there so parking may work out a lot more than you expected to pay and public transport is also costly. With all the correct confirmation from hospitals, we would love to be able to give people money towards their travel to help take that worry away from them as a lot of the time the patients are not able to work or their partners stop working to look after them and money becomes a real issue.

 We would like to offer patients and their families counselling at any time. 

From the personal experience of our founder, this is one of the biggest things lacking in a lot of hospitals. 

Some people need that help as soon as they are diagnosed and others won't need it until maybe after treatment has finished or even later down the line and may need it for years and years after. When cancer cells are no longer inside your body it does not mean the effects it has had on you have gone. Months or years can go by and then you start to experience anxiety, depression, PTSD and so much more what our founder has found from support groups and talking to people on social media is their families were offered no mental health help at all which is so sad as they go through this with you and it can affect them just as much as you but often its a case of them feeling they have to be strong for you and not dhow how affected they are which then only builds up and can have very detrimental affects longterm whether that's your partner, kids, family members or your best friends. So much more needs to be done for mental health, there is just nowhere near enough support for this out there but we would like to be one extra person who can help with this and luckily we have someone on board willing to help with this already but we know this another of the long term goals as so much official preparation will need to be done before hand but it is one of our biggest goals and it will happen

No matter if you have a double or single mastectomy, a lumpectomy, or some other kind of surgery for breast cancer no one should then have to go out and spend their own money to buy the correct support bras to help them heal. If you have a single mastectomy you may be fine with having only one boob remaining or you may want a prosthesis to fill out the other side of your bra Unmask Cancer really wants to help with that and help you feel as comfortable as possible without worrying about costs.

Most hospitals or Macmillan centres offer you a free wig on the NHS if you have lost your hair due to chemotherapy but not everyone likes these wigs and prefer to buy their own but again why should you be spending money on something because cancer cells decided to attack your body and you have had to go through harsh treatment to get rid of it. 

There are so many places offering amazing wigs these days and a lot of them are not much more than £30 although they can be a lot more expensive but as a charity after speaking to your cancer team we would give you vouchers or money to buy wigs to give you that little bit of confidence back.

Now this is another long-term big goal but one day we will be able to provide real hair wigs, this may start with children and young adults, and hopefully, with enough funding we can make it possible for adults too even if it has to be at a reduced cost. Luckily Unmask Cancer has an excellent hairdresser who has been planning on taking a real hair wig-making course for a while and she would love to team up with us once she is qualified and start providing kids with real hair wigs.

In time it would be so lovely to arrange local meet-ups so people can share their experiences, give tips and advice, or even talk about any other than the C word but know they have a group of local people who understand and are there for them.