We are The Christie magazine -Edition 5

Anne Crook, Counsellor Anne has recently retired after being a counsellor at The Christie for 15 years. Her role sat in our psycho-oncology service, which is made up of a range of mental health experts, including mental health nurses, psychologists, counsellors and psychiatrists.

Lucy Davies, Radiographer When Lucy, one of our radiographers, was a teenager, she thought her future would be about performances and pointe shoes rather than radiotherapy and PhDs.

“Good cancer care is about more than the treatment; it’s about understanding the effect it has on the whole person, including their mind,” she says. “When someone gets referred in, we discuss it as a team and make sure they’re seeing the right professional for them. It’s a really personalised approach.

Lucy, who trained as a professional ballet dancer, has worked as a radiographer at The Christie for over 12 years. She’s now doing research that aims to minimise facial deformation in children who have had radiotherapy, including proton beam therapy, for head and neck cancer. “I started dancing when I was three and then after my GCSEs I successfully auditioned for and trained at the Central School of Ballet in London. I danced professionally for a while after graduating, but after sustaining an injury, I decided to retrain. I wanted a career where I was able to help people whilst working with advanced technology, so radiotherapy seemed like the perfect choice,” she says.

“A cancer diagnosis can take over absolutely everything, and what counselling can do is help patients to get to a place where cancer is one part of their lives, not their whole life. To be able to work with people to give them back a sense of control and agency is very rewarding,” she says.

“I had surgery here and have finished my treatment now. My prognosis is good, but it gave me an even deeper appreciation of everything my

Lucy has always worked in paediatric radiotherapy and oncology. She has recently secured a prestigious NIHR Doctoral Clinical Academic Fellowship, looking at understanding facial deformation after radiotherapy, a life-altering long-term side effect of treatment in children with head and neck cancer. “I’ve just completed the first year of my PhD. I've been working closely with my dedicated patient advisory

“I wanted a career where I was able to help people whilst working with advanced technology, so radiotherapy seemed like the perfect choice.” Lucy Davies

colleagues do for patients.” Anne Crook

Anne became a patient at The Christie in 2023 when she was diagnosed with a neuroendocrine tumour.

“I had surgery here and have finished my treatment now. My prognosis is good, but it gave me an even deeper appreciation of everything my colleagues do for patients. Going to the art room at The Christie has been something that’s really helped me with my own mental health. That’s definitely something that I’ll keep up in my retirement,” Anne adds.

group to develop a research study called REFLECT aiming to better understand the experiences and perspectives of childhood cancer survivors and their families living with facial deformation after head and neck radiotherapy. REFLECT has recently opened for recruitment. I have also worked with experts from across the world to develop an international facial structures delineation consensus atlas so that we can tell which parts of the face will be receiving radiation during treatment. This will allow us to look at ways to try to reduce radiation dose to the facial structures that can lead to deformation during treatment planning. This is an area that hasn’t really been researched before, and we hope that the research will potentially improve outcomes for childhood cancer survivors,” Lucy adds.

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