By DAVID NAGEL
TAKING on board a Pink Ladies Day message from South East Football Netball League Operations Manager Liz Triffitt twelve months ago – well it may well have saved Denise McGowan her life.
Denise, the organiser of Saturday’s Pink Ladies Day at Beaconsfield, received a letter in the mail just days after last year’s event held at Holm Park Reserve.
“It was a letter to say I was due for a mammogram, and normally I would just put something like that aside and worry about it again in six months’ time,” Denise said.
“But the message was still clear in my head. I said to myself, ‘Don’t be a bloody idiot’, so I went and got tested and a week later I was told that I had breast cancer. I had the lump removed, had three weeks of radiation treatment and will need medication for the next 10 years.
“But that early detection was paramount for me, without that mammogram who knows where I would be today.”
Denise said her own examinations may not have detected her condition for some time to come.
“It was a very small lump and without that mammogram it may have taken another six months to detect it, and that’s six months of it spreading further through my body,” she said.
“I would encourage people to get down to Berwick (St John of God) and get tested.”
Just under 140 people attended Saturday’s event, raising $4000 through raffles and $5 from each entry ticket sold to go to the Breast Cancer Network of Australia.
“It was just such an awesome day, everything went so well and the message to come from the day is just so important,” Denise said.
“We get great support from the league (SEFNL) and the players were great wearing pink socks and playing with pink footballs on the day.”
The day’s other guest speaker, Carole Irving, had a different message to get across after her own battles with lymphoma.
Carole’s survival was dependant on a bone marrow transplant with the marrow provided by her brother.
Denise said the process of donating bone marrow was a lot simpler now than the painful days of the past.
“I would have been too scared to go through the procedure in the past, but now it’s basically like giving blood,” she said. “You have a few injections a couple weeks before, to help promote the growth of bone marrow in your body, and then it takes four hours on the day.
“They take the blood out, filter it to remove the marrow and then return the blood into your system. It takes four hours and the job’s done, it’s such an important thing for people to understand.”
The message is certainly spreading, with Cranbourne also hosting its own Pink Ladies Day on Saturday, with other football and netball clubs from the south east hosting events of their own over the last fortnight.
