Go booze free for Bendigo Health

PRIORITISE your own health while also supporting the wellbeing of people with cancer by taking on the Dry July challenge for Bendigo Health.

The organisation is calling on members of the public and businesses to ditch the drink next month and nominate the health service as their beneficiary to raise money for the Gobbé Wellness Centre.

Manager of fundraising and foundation at Bendigo Health Rachel Mason said members of the public and businesses can make a real difference by joining the campaign.

“As a dedicated cancer facility and cancer centre we are given a beneficiary status and what that means is we just want people to actually nominate Bendigo Health when they sign up and that ensures that the money is dedicated to our wonderful cancer wellness program at the Gobbé Wellness Centre,” she said.

“It doesn’t matter if its $20 or $2000, every donation will make a difference.

“It might cost us $60 to pay someone to provide a specialist oncology massage so if someone receives a donation of $60, you’re paying it forward to help out a person locally.”

Ms Mason said further funding can also be granted by Dry July following their assessment of campaign involvement, with a massive community effort last year resulting in enough money raised to establish the centre ahead of schedule.

“Last year the community itself through the campaign raised $77,000 which was amazing, then we had a little bit of magic happen,” she said.

“We had a mystery donor donate $100,000 to the appeal and then Dry July came in on top of that and gave us another $50,000.

“With those funds we then went out and made this place become a reality.”

The centre provides four main complimentary therapies, yoga, reflexology, mindfulness and oncology massage, to cancer patients alongside their medical treatment, with other services also available according to cancer wellness coordinator and oncology nurse Jenna Sing.

“There’s a lot of complications that come with any cancer treatment whether that’s chemotherapy, immunotherapy or radiotherapy where patients have a lot of toxicities,” she said.

“They suffer a huge amount of mental health strain with a cancer diagnosis so essentially the complimentary therapies are aligned to work with traditional medicine… to alleviate some of the toxicities and also help with their wellbeing.”

John Hunter has bowel cancer in the perineum and visited the centre for the first-time last Friday for reflexology to treat the peripheral neuropathy, or damaged nerves, in his feet.

“It’s just wonderful, unbelievable,” he said. “The nurses are just brilliant, they’re just beautiful people and they just try to help you with everything they do.”

Money raised during this year’s Dry July campaign will go towards expanding services and ensuring they can be delivered into the future as the centre is not covered by normal hospital funding streams.

To sign up for Dry July and nominate Bendigo Health as your beneficiary or to make a direct donation visit dryjuly.com/bendigo.