Family’s unique cancer fundraiser through selfie smiles
WEST SLIGO DAD’S RARE CANCER INSPIRES FAMILY TO UNDERTAKE A UNIQUE FUNDRAISER WHICH REFLECTS OUR WORLD RIGHT NOW
Hundreds of people have been ‘smiling with their eyes’ over the last fortnight in aid of a charitable cause aimed at supporting the Neuroendocrine Tumour (NET) Clinic at St Vincent’s Hospital.
The Winters family - Lorna, Justin, Rian and Ella - from Castleconnor in west Sligo have put together an innovative social media campaign which asks people to take a selfie with their mask on and ‘smile with their eyes’, before nominating four friends to do likewise and donate to the GoFundMe page.
Lorna Winters came up with the idea, and was motivated to do so in aid of the NET Clinic due to the rare cancer diagnosis her husband Justin received for the first time in 2017.
Justin Winters was diagnosed with a Neuroendocrine Carcinoid Tumour on his bowel, three years ago and underwent surgery on two occasions in 2018, the second time for his gall bladder to be removed.
Having made a steady recovery after that operation in October 2018, he returned to work in the middle of 2019 before a routine scan last February revealed four more carcinoid tumours on his spleen, liver and one close to the pancreas. He faces a further surgery in the coming months.
It is a very rare diagnosis, and treatment for it is hard to come by.
The cancer does not respond to either chemotherapy or radiation, and up until recently the only centre of excellence to treat the condition was located in the Swedish city of Uppsala.
However, a centre is being established in Dublin and funds raised from this campaign will go towards its further development.
Within the first week, the fundraiser had attracted over €8,000 - a far cry from the €500 target Lorna had set when the campaign launched.
“It is a very rare cancer and the diagnosis is very rare as well. They call it the quiet cancer. Justin underwent surgery in January 2018 and again in October 2018 when his gall bladder was removed. He went back to work in June of 2019 and went for his yearly routine scan in February this year which showed a carcinoid tumour on his spleen, two on his liver and one close to the pancreas,” Lorna explained to The Sligo Champion.
“The cancer is unusual in that it doesn’t respond to chemotherapy or radiation, so he has a huge, huge surgery coming up,” she added.
The idea for the fundraiser came about just under two weeks ago, Lorna said, and once she had the idea, she ran it by her eleven-year-old daughter Ella who came up with the tagline that has caught the imagination of many on social media in recent days and weeks.
“Last week we decided, I had a day off on the Friday and I was wondering what we would do,” Lorna said of the background to the idea.
“I was in the room and saw a face mask lying on the bed, and I thought ‘well people were doing selfies for loads of different things before masks, so why not do a mask selfie?’ ”
“So I thought about the idea and I had a chat with my daughter Ella, who is 11, to see what she thought and she said it would be something positive to do, so we went with it.
“She came up with the tagline - she said ‘Smile in Disguise - Smile with your Eyes’ so we shortened it down a little bit to ‘Smile with your Eyes’.
“We chatted about it at about 8 o’clock in the evening and by the time that we had finished at 11 o’clock it was up and running and we set ourselves a target of €500. Never in a thousand years did we think it would go as big as it has.”
The response has been extensive and has stretched well beyond the west Sligo and north Mayo communities.
It has been primarily advertised through Lorna’s own social media channels, but radio interviews, including one with iRadio last week, have helped the campaign reach further than they had ever anticipated.
“The response has been phenomenal, it has just taken over. I did the promotion just myself on Facebook and on Instagram as well, I have an account which is called ‘Gallivanting with Goldilocks’. That’s how it started and I suppose it has just taken off from there.”
The campaign has also received the support of RTÉ Northern Editor and Sligo native Tommie Gorman, who was diagnosed with a similar condition in the 1990s.
Ms Winters says that Mr Gorman was in touch last week to offer his support to their efforts.
For more information, you can visit Smile With Your Eyes on GoFundMe.