Tributes paid to cancer drug campaigner Kay

FORMER nurse Kay Hopkins was yesterday remembered at a service which gave thanks for her life.

The 71-year-old, who spearheaded a 'postcode lottery' campaign to win funding for cancer drug Sutent from NHS North Staffordshire, was celebrated during a funeral service in Chell.

Mourners gathered at St Michael and All Angels church to pay tribute to the great-grandmother from Harriseahead, pictured right, who died at the Douglas Macmillan Hospice on November 6.

She was brought into the church to the sound of Embraceable You and left the building to It's Magic, both recorded by Doris Day.

And the Reverend Stephen Pratt remarked upon Kay's love of singing.

"The songs we have heard today were two of those she used to sing; she was the Doris Day of the Midlands."

In an emotional eulogy, Kay's son Mark, from Church Lawton, said: "My mum spent many years caring for others. She was a determined lady who fought the cause of others who also had cancer."

The 49-year-old added: "She would say 'Oh, Mark, I'm not just your mother you know, I'm your best friend and you won't realise this until I leave this earth'.

"How true those words were because not only was she my mum, she was my best friend.

"I love you with all my heart, mum, and I will truly miss you."

Brother Paul, aged 47, from Tunstall, added: "You were the greatest wife to our dad and the most wonderful mum to me and Mark, your boys. You were a brilliant nan to all your grandchildren and a great friend to your friends."

Mr Pratt told the congregation of about 150 people how Bagnall-born Kay spent more than four decades caring for the elderly at hospitals Westcliffe Hospital, Chell, Longton Cottage, Bradwell and Haywood in Burslem.

Mr Pratt said: "As we remember her battle against cancer and her fight with the PCT to make life-saving drugs available for herself, but also for the whole of Stoke-on-Trent, as we remember all of that, the book of Revelation points us forward to the day when God will put right all that has become wrong in the world."

Mr Pratt described how Kay and 73-year-old husband Paul were to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary next year.

And Mr Pratt added: "You know, you very nearly made that golden anniversary. What an example of love and commitment and of what love is all about."

The vicar compared Kay's "selfless" care for others to God's love for all of mankind.

And he said: "Kay was eventually put on a trial for Sutent, and it did work. If only she had been put on it earlier, because things happened just that little too late."

But the congregation agreed when the vicar asked them: "Kay was strong and dignified to the end, wasn't she?"

The service was followed by cremation at Carmountside and a wake at The Furlong pub in Tunstall.

Donations were taken for the Douglas Macmillan hospice.

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