Chemo comfort bags delivered to QA after Tower to Tower charity walk raises over £7,000

Jenna Murray, 41 from Port Solent, hand-delivered 125 chemo comfort bags on Monday, along with her husband Alyn Murray and neighbour Richard Simmons, to the Queen Alexandra Hospital in Cosham.

The donation comes after Jenna’s friends and family, including Alyn and their 13-year-old son Connor, took part in a 75-mile ‘Tower to Tower’ walk from Tower Bridge, London all the way to Spinnaker Tower in Portsmouth.

Jenna was diagnosed with stage three breast cancer on January 28, 2021 and began chemotherapy in March 2021, soon beginning to feel the brunt of the side effects, from hair loss to severe nausea and Neuropathy, pain in her feet preventing her from walking.

‘I have good days and bad days, I’d be lying if I said it was easy, it really isn’t,’ said Jenna.

‘My body’s had a year of chemotherapy, radiotherapy and a mastectomy without really having a chance to recover.’

In October, Jenna began organising the Tower to Tower charity walk as a drive to raise money for people, like her, struggling through what she described as the ‘worst experience’ of her life.

From there, the Jenna’s Story campaign continued to grow and she found herself supported by 11 friends, family and neighbours who came together, in the enormous undertaking to walk from ‘Tower to Tower’, raising a total of £7,350 towards the comfort of chemotherapy and radiotherapy patients.

‘Cancer Research and Macmillan are all really great causes, but we wanted to do something where you could see where it goes and know it was going to benefit people in our local community,’ said Jenna.

Jenna says friends and family have been ‘amazing’, from her ‘superstar’ son Connor who took part in ‘Tower to Tower’ with a school friend, neighbours Richard and Gail who first suggested the charity walk, to her parents who were by her side as members of the support team.

The bag’s items, carefully selected by Jenna based on the things she was given that made ‘such a big difference’ to her, includes gifts such as aromatherapy wheat bags, colouring pencils, hand cream and more.

‘I wanted to do that for anyone who unfortunately has to go through this journey too. If we can make it even a little bit better for them, I’d like to do that,’ said Jenna.

‘We’re definitely looking ahead to the next challenge, one this time next year that hopefully I can take part in.’

To donate to Jenna’s fundraiser visit justgiving.com/crowdfunding/jennasjourney.

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