Sometimes it is a worthwhile and useful exercise to go back to the beginning, so I thought it was about time I shared with you the story of how Maggie’s came to be. In 1988, Maggie Keswick Jencks was diagnosed with breast cancer. In the words of her best friend Marcia Blakenham: “She had a mastectomy, more or less forgot about it and got on with her life.” That was, until five years later when the cancer returned, and this time was found to be in her bone, bone marrow and liver. She was given just a few months to live and advised to get her affairs in order. A drugs trial turned three months to live into an 18 month remission, and during that time, she wrote A View from the Front Line; a patient’s perspective on cancer and its treatments originally for medical journal The Breast. You can download a copy here and I highly recommend it if you’re in any way involved in design for wellbeing.
Maggie had found great strength from taking charge of her own cancer experience; from ‘doing’ rather than being ‘done to’ – and she felt that other people could benefit from doing the same, but that they, like she, needed help negotiating the overwhelming amount of information on cancer treatments, be they traditional, complementary or alternative. At first she envisioned a modest booklet called Empowering the Patient, but quickly decided that yet another piece of text wasn’t the solution. What she felt was needed instead was a place – somewhere near the hospital with an office and a library. The idea for the first Maggie’s Centre was born, and she had even spied a possible home for it, a small stable building within the grounds of Edinburgh’s Western General Hospital where she was being treated.
A View from the Front Line had been written in 1994, and by February 1995, architect Richard Murphy had been briefed to create a plan for what would become Maggie’s Edinburgh. By April 1995, Maggie’s cancer had returned for a third and final time. She knew she didn’t really didn’t have long this time, and so redoubled her efforts and within a month, she had produced the blueprint on which all Maggie’s Centres are now based.
The Centre would offer everything from a cup and tea and a conversation to psychological support; and it would provide information and advice on the nutrition, exercise and relaxation therapies that had helped Maggie take control of her cancer experience. Everybody visiting the Centre would be treated as person not a patient, and would be supported in finding their own path through cancer – there would be no ‘right way.’
Sadly Maggie died on 8th July 1995, a year before the Centre was built, but she had laid the foundations, not just for one Centre, but for an organisation that now has 15 Centres across the UK and recently opened its first overseas Centre in Hong Kong, where Maggie spent a lot of time as a child. Her husband Charles Jencks ensured the first Centre was completed as she intended and remains closely involved with the charity, as does her best friend, Marcia Blakenham and her daughter, architect and landscape gardener Lily Jencks.
In fact it is testament to Maggie’s character how many of the people who were around her almost twenty years ago remain closely involved – Laura Lee, her oncology nurse is now the charity’s CEO and Prof Bob Leonard, her oncologist, sits on both the main board and the Professional Advisory Board.
Maggie’s Edinburgh is now a thriving centre, offering calmness, clarity and a cup of tea to people with cancer and their families and friends, some of whom talk about their experiences in this short film…
Who would have thought one lady and a little tumble-down stable block could have such a profound influence on so many lives?
Further reading for the especially geeky:
