Help Kirsty get through her cancer treatment

The last thing Kirsty Hall, an artist who has suffered from ME/CFS for nearly thirty years, needed in the middle of a plague was a cancer diagnosis.

She was diagnosed with a rare form of anal cancer at the end of November 2021. And yes, the dark comedy arse jokes have been keeping her and her husband Cat Vincent semi-sane ever since! The cancer is Stage 2 and thankfully has not spread anywhere. It is also a very treatable form of cancer so her prognosis is currently good: the doctors are aiming to completely cure it.

Despite the strain of the ongoing Covid situation, the NHS has moved swiftly to treat her, and her chemoradiotherapy begins on 18th January, and lasts for five and a half weeks. Treatment is daily during the week, with weekends off.

Because this is a rare kind of cancer, treatment will take place in the specialist cancer centre at St James' Hospital in Leeds. This is an hour away from her home in Hebden Bridge, which is a trial for a disabled couple with no personal transport. Fortunately the hospital has a small hotel floor where Kirsty and Cat are able to stay for free during the week. The treatment itself is also free but there are a lot of incidental expenses, mostly weekly travel (a taxi one-way costs around £50, so they will potentially be spending around £600 on that alone) and daily meals (there are no cooking facilities in the accommodation). There have also been a lot of expenses involved in preparing to stay away from home for so long. It's all mounting up, so any help would be very gratefully received.

Please only give if you can genuinely afford to, Kirsty and Cat know it's been a tough time for many folk and don't want people to put themselves into any financial hardship.