The Scotsman

Some moments stay with you for ever. Like the moment Charles Jencks and his wife, Maggie, sat in a consulting room in Edinburgh's Western General and were told that she had less than three months to live. Then, as kindly as possible, they were ushered out into the corridor because, staff told them, "we have so many patients waiting". Jencks remembers how he and Maggie "sat down dolefully" to consider what they'd just heard. "It was like being put into prison, being told you're going to die and being put on death row. Some nurses who knew her came by and asked, 'How are you, dearie?' and she looked up and said, 'Oh, I'm fine.' The irony in her voice was extreme." That unspeakably awful moment was also, in its own way, a beginning. Together, Charles and Maggie would defy the diagnosis and Maggie would live for another two years. In that time she drew up a plan which would change the lives of other cancer sufferers. Thirteen years later, a network of centres named after her (the latest, in Kirkcaldy, formally opens today) are pioneering a new way of helping those with cancer and their families. Next week marks a decade since the first centre, beside the Western General, opened its doors.