Triumph and tragedy Vicky faces an agonising dilemma when a recurrence is diagnosed and she wonders whether she should continue with her plans now she knows her days are numbered. Encouraged by the support of those close to her, she decides there is no time to waste. BACUP is launched in October 1985 and a star is born as Vicky devotes the remaining two years of her life to promoting and expanding the organisation. Her heroic struggle to keep the cancer at bay while she achieves her ends is truly a case of mind over matter. She dies in July 1987 secure in the knowledge that 'BACUP is sailing and safe,' her last words. Her achievements as teacher, pioneer, pilgrim are acknowledged in a moving memorial service in St Paul's Cathedral.

Only a few people at that meeting knew the true significance of Vicky's undertaking. Just ten days before this inaugural BACUP meeting took place she had left hospital after another major operation. The tumour had grown again and spread to other organs. She was left with a permanent colostomy.

Vicky and Tim were shocked and devastated by this unforeseen disaster. Even her doctors had not expected it so there had been no pre-operative counselling with a stoma nurse. There followed what she described in a letter to a friend as 'a stormy post-operative period'. Not only did she have to try to come to terms with what had happened but she had to cope with serious complications and pain so severe that she had to be given morphine. Her anger and her grief subsided faster than did Tim's who felt appalled and helpless on her behalf. But they comforted each other and, in her typical fashion, Vicky quickly pulled herself together and set about learning practical tips for coping with her new situation.

When Vicky first knew that her cancer had come back she considered very seriously whether she should go ahead with her BACUP project. She feared that all the enthusiasm she had generated and the offers of support that had come pouring in might melt away if it were known that she had suffered a recurrence of her cancer. Yet, she could see no wisdom in concealing her condition. The truth would come out in the end anyway.

A chance encounter with an American, Jay Weinberg, who had also set up a cancer charity and had survived not one but two primary cancers separated by thirty years, convinced her that she could carry on with her plans. When he had a recurrence of the second cancer he had been in a quandary similar to Vicky's, as he was about to launch a major fundraising campaign. However, after discussing the matter from every angle with his friends and fellow campaigners, they had come to the conclusion that honesty was the best policy. Mr Weinberg urged Vicky to follow his example -- to be herself, to be honest about her cancer and to carry on with her project. Heartened by his courageous story, Vicky knew from that moment that she had something more to work for than just her health. She had BACUP to create and nurture and lead.

A hazardous journey lay ahead of her. It was desperately hard for Vicky to admit that once more she was facing an uncertain future. She had defied death more than once since the first diagnosis but now, for the first time she reluctantly accepted that she must adjust her long range sights. She wrote: 'I work on a six month to one year plan rather than thinking about things that I will do in two to three years…I think of positive things which will come out of my current illness.'

Before the end of 1984 many of the action targets had already been achieved. She had appointed key members of staff including Yvonne Terry, a cancer nurse, as Project Co-ordinator for the Cancer Information Service. The Special Trustees of Barts had promised to provide office accommodation near the hospital at a very low rental for a ten-year term. She was now able to state confidently that the Cancer Information Service would be launched in the autumn of 1985 with four trained cancer nurses on the switchboard who would be backed up leading medical and nursing specialists in oncology. After the New Year there was the prospect of more shattering chemotherapy, but once that was over she would start preparing the publicity campaign for the launch of the charity in October. Vicky may have started her organisation as a novice in this field but no one could have been a more rapid and able learner. She hit the ground running and never stopped for a moment until her final illness.

Vicky, as many people fondly remarked of her, had no false modesty. She loved the limelight and being the centre of attention. Put her under the television lights or facing a microphone and she seemed to absorb energy like an opening flower. She was far and away the best spokesperson for her cause. Bright, articulate, vibrating with enthusiasm, she made an indelible impression on those who watched her and listened to her. Invariably wearing her trademark trilby hat, her spotted bow tie and her smart shirts and jackets, no one would have guessed from her jaunty appearance just how ill she was. She might have been writhing with pain minutes before the interview but once in front of the cameras her concentration on her subject was total.

Probably her most memorable interview was 'In the Psychiatrist's Chair' with Professor Anthony Clare. It had been pre-recorded and she listened to it going out on air when she was in the middle of a hazardous bone marrow transplant - one of her many narrow escapes from death. She had agonised over accepting the invitation because she was worried that she might reveal details about herself that could cause pain to her intimate family and friends. It was only later when the letters came flooding in, some of which brought tears to her eyes, that her friends' reassurances that she had indeed done well induced her to relax her state of high tension.

As well as her dedication to promoting BACUP Vicky was passionately concerned to pass on her message to the next generation of medical students. She wanted these young people to be made aware right from the start of their careers that it was as important to respect the emotional and psychological needs of their patients as to care for their physical condition. There is a moving moment in one of the two videos she made with Professor Anthony Clare where she urges the students to be willing to cry with their patients. The professor, as if uncertain that he has really heard her words, asks her to repeat them which Vicky does with even more emphasis.

'What would you have said a few years ago before your illness if somebody had said that to you?' he asks. 'That it was very unprofessional,' she replied, smiling.

She was a star - no doubt of it - but she also had the precious gift of making stars out of other people. She loved bringing friends and proteges 'out' in whatever way made best use of their talents. She was a wonderful life-enhancer, one of those people who can light up even the dreariest and saddest corners of life. There are many people who can remember Vicky, even at the very end of her days, when she had every excuse for being miserable, still bubbling with enthusiasm and gaiety.

The official launch of BACUP in October 1985, a year to the day since Vicky had announced her intention to the first meeting, was a huge success. In the two years that remained to Vicky after this occasion, she worked unceasingly to keep the organisation in the public eye, meanwhile working behind the scenes in the cramped offices as unpaid chief executive. Inevitably there were times of crisis and high tension. It was hard for the staff to function in the presence of someone known to be dying. Everybody was living on the edge; the nurses especially found their work on the helpline very draining. No one had anticipated the depth and degree of emotional anguish that would be uncovered.

The months went on and Vicky became increasingly frail, surviving, no one knew how, ever more arduous treatments. She was endowed with a quite remarkable degree of 'fighting spirit', a quality which cancer doctors recognise with awe. It can enable those patients who possess it to achieve extraordinary goals and successes at a time when everyone around them has more or less given up hope.

`Positive denial' can be equally powerful: the patient has, at one level of consciousness, accepted the reality of their cancer and, then quite deliberately, pushes it away from the centre of their mind so that they can get on with the present, the job of living each day as it comes, to the full. Vicky achieved this superbly well. Of course, she knew she had incurable cancer and that, eventually, there would be no escape, she would die from it.

She had never flinched from recognising this fact and she had discussed the prospect of death many times at an early stage with her closest friends. Now that death had come so much closer and she had hung over the brink so often, she saw no reason to waste any of her precious time talking about its inevitability. All the same, being Vicky, she intended to do it as well as possible. 'Death,' said Dr Maurice Slevin 'became another project for her.'

However, while there was breath in her body she was determined to make the most of her life. Ever rational, she decided that the only sensible way of dealing with her increasing frailty was to trim her expectations to match her abilities. There was no point in railing against the unkind fates; instead, by concentrating on what she could achieve she derived the greatest joy from the simplest pleasures like walking round her garden or going out to dinner with friends. 'Just give me a tiny inch and I will get pleasure out of it and it will pull me up,' she said to a friend just six weeks before she died.

At the end of her life the honours came thick and fast. She loved the attention and the acclaim but the one she valued the most was her election as Fellow of her own college, the Royal College of Physicians, in recognition of her work with BACUP.

This description of Vicky's outstanding character and career comes from the address given by the Reverend Doug Hiza at her memorial service in St Paul's Cathedral on 3rd November 1987. The whole occasion was a triumphant celebration of her life and work but the most touching, and human, epitaph came from her friend and great supporter, the late Professor Tim McElwain. He told a favourite story.

'One day when she was walking across the meat market on the way to BACUP she was hailed by a porter.' 'Saw you on the box last night,'' he said. 'Good, wasn't I?' she replied. Well, she was, wasn't she? She was good and clever and funny and creative and constant and brave and inspirational; and out of all that pain and suffering and uncertainty she brought forth BACUP and that is her memorial.'