Chemo bags: ‘It’s a gift to help’

This Breast Cancer Awareness Month, we hear how one lady’s experience led her to set up a charity giving special gift bags to help people through chemotherapy

In a little warehouse in Berkshire, Lynne Shipton and a handful of volunteers are surrounded by goodies, from blankets and fluffy socks to combs and handmade cushions. All generously donated by members of the public or businesses, Lynne and her team get to work lovingly packing up these items into gift bags that will be given out to try to make the life of someone going through chemotherapy just that little bit easier.

For Lynne, this work has become her life but it all began in 2015 when she herself was diagnosed with breast cancer.

While she couldn’t be treated with chemotherapy because of an existing medical condition (she had radiotherapy instead) she soon got chatting and made friends with other women who were going through chemotherapy.

“We got talking about all the things that you need when going through chemotherapy and my friends shared stories of the things that had worked for them,” says Lynne. From polo mints and ginger biscuits to help calm the nausea chemo can bring, to lip balm to ease the common issue of chapped lips after treatment, Lynne and her friends soon had a kind of ‘ultimate chemo shopping list’.

That’s when Lynne (57) decided she could do something to help other people going through chemotherapy treatment for breast cancer by creating a gift bag packed with these essentials.

Starting with just one bag, the moment she saw the wonderful smile of the lady who received it, she knew this was something that could really make a difference and so the charity Chemogiftbags was born.

Today, Lynne and her team give out hundreds of bags every year for women – and a few men – in the Thames Valley area who are about to start, or are going through, chemotherapy for breast cancer. The bags are packed in a warehouse before being collected by volunteer ambassadors located in different areas and handed out to individual people who’ve applied to have a bag, or to some hospitals that take in a dozen bags ready to give patients as soon as they have been diagnosed.

Everything in the bags comes from