It must have been sometime in the early 1980s - I’m guessing around 1984 - that I attended a fund-raising event in Ayr’s Abbottsford Hotel for an embryonic project called the “Ayr Hospice”.
I got chatting to an elderly cancer specialist who introduced a new word to my vocabulary - palliative. I was still a youngish man at the time - maybe not even 30. “Has cancer touched your life yet?” he asked. “No . . “ I answered. “It will, son . . .it will” he replied.
He was, sadly, proved right. About five years later, I think it was 1989, the Ayrshire Hospice opened. A few years after that, I watched my best friend - later to be my ‘best man’ - spend his final weeks there.
If I needed just one reason to sign the Ayrshire Post’s “Save Station 15” petition - that would be enough. But today - some 30 years on from that day at the Abbotsford - I now have dozens of reasons.
The loss of Station 15 would be calamitous for tens of thousands of people.
Not just for cancer sufferers themselves - but the families forced to travel extra miles to Crosshouse where NHS Ayrshire want the unit transferred. Dressed up by NHS Ayrshire with words like “sustainable” and “accessible” - it’s cost cutting exercise. It’s what NHS Ayrshire wants - not what the people of South Ayrshire need.
I’ve signed the Post’s petition. Have you?
To sign the petition go to https://www.change.org/p/jeane-freeman-msp-ayrshire-post-save-station-15-at-ayr-hospital.
