rivers2cross

Last week Barry #bowelbear began his journey, and his first stop is with Kelly Smith. Today they both went to The Christie Hospital in Manchester where Kelly is having chemotherapy. Kelly has stage 4 bowel cancer, and she is another of those amazing and inspirational people I have come across and struck up friendships with since my mum was diagnosed with bowel cancer back in 2012. Mum sadly died in 2016. Kelly is tirelessly working to raise awareness about bowel cancer, and to try and reduce the amount of people who have to go through what she is. An increasing number of younger people are being diagnosed with bowel cancer, so please check out the Never Too Young campaign page at Bowel Cancer UK. If you are on Instagram Kelly is on there as @kickasskell and she is a great person to follow. Her honest account of living with cancer will at times have you laughing, while at other times shedding a tear.

The idea behind Barry and all the other stop bowel cancer bears is to help raise awareness about bowel cancer hopefully in a fun way, as the possibilities of where the bears can go and be photographed is endless. You can buy your own #bowelbear in the store in pink or blue. Every penny raised from sales of the bear are donated to Bowel Cancer UK. Where will the bear go next? #bowelbear

I am also really pleased to reveal that Kelly is also going to feature in the forthcoming book, The Record, that I am writing to raise funds for Bowel Cancer UK, which will be published in 2019.