Amazing Person of The Week: David Taylor

Our ‘Amazing Person of The Week’ this week is a figure in our local community. The very well deserving David Taylor, along with his family, have recently launched a £1 million campaign in memory of his Daughter Sue who sadly passed away just six weeks after being diagnosed with a fatal form of brain tumour.

Sue’s death six years ago at the age of 42 inspired her Father David to form the charity ‘In Sue’s Name’ to continue her legacy and to raise vital funds for brain cancer research in the hope other families won’t have to go through the heartache Sue’s family did when she left behind 2 children – Sasha, now 19, and Daniel, 17.

The family decided to partner with the charity Brain Tumour Research to pledge to raise £1 million to further studies at Queen Mary University of London into the tumour that took Sue’s life, glioblastoma multiforme.

David has said she faced death with amazing  courage, adding: “Her most worrying thought was how her family would cope when she had gone. She said, ‘I have got the easy job as I am going to die and you have got the hard job,  carrying on without me’.”

Mr Taylor saw a lack of awareness surrounding brain tumours and funding into vital brain cancer research. He set up In Sue’s Name in 2014 to change this, as brain tumours currently kill more children and adults under the age of 40 than any other cancer and yet it receives only 1% of the national spend on cancer research.

Sue had done 5 sponsored runs for Cancer Research UK and a sponsored skydive for the charity after members of her family were diagnosed with cancer.

She was treated at The Royal Free Hospital, and by a cruel twist of fate, at the same time as two other parishioners from her local Catholic church in Palmers Green, both sadly too passed away aged 34 and 42.

Mr Taylor hopes the work of In Sue’s Name will help Sue’s children, Sasha and Daniel, to understand how much their mother was loved. “Galvanized by the fact that treatments for brain tumour patients remain so limited, we are pledging to raise £1 million over the next 10 years to fund vital research,” he said.

“We hope that this will lead to more effective treatments for brain tumour patients and ultimately a cure.”

It costs £1 million a year to fund research at Queen Mary’s centre of excellence at the universality, one of four supported by Brain Tumour Research. In the UK 16,000 people a year are diagnosed with brain tumours. One in five survives beyond five years.

BTR’s chief executive Sue Farrington Smith said the partnership with In Sue’s Name “will lead to better outcomes for patients — from improved awareness for earlier diagnosis to the development of more effective, personalised treatments and targeted drugs”.

She added: “Through the funds generated, we will be able to significantly fast-track progress towards finding a cure for brain tumours.”

Home Care Preferred are delighted to be supporting In Sue’s Name and their o£1 million pledge, and will be contributing their time and skills wherever they can.

Community Relations Manager, Laura Brassett, states ” I had the pleasure of meeting David about a year ago at a networking event and the cause really pulled on my heart strings. I am proud and happy to be contributing to the charity in any way I can, and wish David and his family all the success in their aim as it is truly deserved for such a courageous, vibrant family.”

(Parts of the above article have been taken from the Evening Standard)