Edmund Colman Whelan

18th June 1947 to 8th May 2013

Edmund's new Legacy

To help earlier diagnosis of Adenocarcinoma of the lungs in the hope that fewer people will be told ‘you are too ill for chemo’.

This is a particularly aggressive form of lung cancer and most often diagnosed too late for anything more than palliative care. In his case, as with many others, it had already spread to the lymph system and as he had an extensive web of tumours, specialists were unable to operate or apply radiotherapy.

Lung Cancer death rate is much higher as it is not easily detectable until the later stages- other cancers have found markers and other ways of detecting them early. Yet the money for research is not there so all the bright young scientists, who need to earn a living, go into other areas of research and people with lung cancer find out all too late.

Petition

In order to help achieve this earlier diagnosis a Petition for change has been set up via CHANGE.ORG: http://chn.ge/198NfH1

Doctors should be required to automatically check the lymph nodes on the neck as part of all standard checkups such as blood pressure, etc, especially when the patient has a persistent cough. Retrospectively, Edmund said that he knew about a lentil sized lump on his neck six months ago. This was the first thing the A+E looked for – why did his doctor not check this back in February or March when she gave him 4 different antibiotics, none of which cured his cough?

Please sign the petition: http://chn.ge/198NfH1

BBC story: How underfunded is lung cancer research?

Future campaigns
We plan to move forward with other suggested changes. These will be updated on this page, where we will keep you informed as to progress and any further support requested from you. Do please look at it regularly and sign up for each further campaign under way:

1. Hospitals should change the food they offer chest and cancer patients to a high ph diet where possible and exclude offering foodstuffs on which cancers are known to thrive, eg coffee, sugar, tinned fruit – give them fresh fruit, also green tea and fresh pineapple which are known to reduce tumours.

2. More funds should be available for Lung Cancer research. It is the poor relation – see statistics on the right >>>

3. Use advertising to remove the stigma attached to this form of cancer, this should encourage more giving to lung cancer research.

4. All hospices should do the initial assessment of lung cancer patients within a few days on notification as it is known to sometimes move very quickly. They will then be in a better position to respond quickly if it does.

5. Claims for disabled badge should automatically be given to anyone on 100% requirement for oxygen. This should also be stated on the application form.

Please forward this to your families and friends to sign as well, add to Facebook, Twitter, etc. We need all the signatures and publicity we can get to help drive these changes forward.

Email address to make contact or ask any questions: james@flatchat.co.uk

THANK YOU!

ABOUT EDMUND   :   CONTACT

UPDATE 12/8/2013:
Over 450 people have now signed, the momentum is really positive.

UPDATE 04/7/2013:
It's now over 200 signatures; keep up the good work!

UPDATE 24/6/2013:
The petition has now exceeded 100 signatures; we're now aiming for 1,000, so please copy and paste this link to promote the change:
www.flatchat.co.uk/edmund

UPDATE 19/6/2013:
A huge Thank You to all who came to his celebration service to help make such a special day. He'd have been proud!

CHANGE.ORG
Sign the Change.org Petition here: http://chn.ge/198NfH1

Charitable Donations:
We have set up a page for any charitable contributions which will be divided across:
RNLI (Cowes Lifeboat)
Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation
Sobell House Hospice
http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/edmundwhelan