Survivor’s Wee Boost to feed cancer patients

A JUICE bar and food takeaway service for cancer patients is to be launched by a woman in ­remission for the second time with the help of fellow ­survivors.

Maz Carruthers, 34, who ended her second round of chemotherapy for ovarian ­cancer in April, hopes to launch A Wee Boost later this year in the Beatson Centre at Gartnavel Hospital in Glasgow, serving healthy juices and smoothies to cancer patients.

She said:“When I was sick I found there were lots of things I couldn’t eat, and if you haven’t got any fuel you haven’t got any fight.

“Quite often when you’re ­going through treatment you’re really hungry but you can’t eat anything because you can’t keep it down. What I want to do is provide a service when I can provide something that’s going to be refreshing and give people a little nutritional boost.”

Carruthers, who has the support of Maggie’s Cancer Care Centre at the Beatson, hopes to provide a takeaway service too.

She said: “Sometimes you’re having chemo for six or seven hours a day and the last thing you want to do is go home and cook. So I’m looking at developing some sort of pre-order and take-home food service, looking at how we can maximise things to get good food into people.”

And she is keen to staff the service with people battling cancer themselves. She said: “One of the difficulties with the illness is fatigue so we will try to build in flexible shifts that take account of that.

“People who’ve had the disease need confidence in building their skills and we thought this would be a helpful way to do that and help achieve what we’re trying to do.”

Gillian Hailstones, director of Glasgow’s Maggie’s Cancer Care Centre said: “When Maz came with the idea of A Wee Boost I thought it was fantastic because it’s derived from personal experience, and that’s exactly how Maggie’s started.”

She added: “It’s hugely important for people to have as wide a choice as possible for their nutritional needs when they’re undergoing cancer treatment. We understand the huge impact it has on a person in terms of change in taste, the ability to eat and swallow, nausea and sickness – so to have the widest possible choice when you’re going through that is incredibly important.”