A 31-year-old who dedicated her last moments to helping other cancer patients is to be honoured at Maidstone Hospital, with a bench in her memory.

Laura Clarke, from Swallow Road in Larkfield, found a lump on her breast in late 2012 when she was just 29.

The cardiac physiologist, who worked at Maidstone Hospital, then found herself having treatment there. She underwent a course of chemotherapy, underwent surgery to have the lump removed and had radiotherapy until 2013.

But early the following year she was told that the cancer had returned and was terminal.

Undeterred by the prognosis, selfless Laura had taken to raising money for Kent Breast Cancer Care, whose meetings she attended once a month to meet others with the illness.
Last spring she held a ball at Oakwood House where she raised more than £5,000 for the organisation.

This year, Laura’s Ball will be held at the same venue, in her memory.

“Her colleagues said the thing they would miss about her most was her giggle - you could often hear her before you could see her." - mum Celia

She also opened a Facebook group where she could give advice to young women, something she continued to do when she was admitted to the Heart of Kent Hospice.

Her mother Celia Short said: “She took it on the chin. Her thinking was that she was still here and still had to fight it. She kept going with more chemotherapy and radiotherapy but she was in an awful lot of pain.

"By the end of September she went into hospital to have a chest drain and a blood transfusion and it was then she had a reaction and was told she had a week to live.”

Mrs Clarke died 10 days later, on October 21, surrounded by her family at the Aylesford hospice.

Next week staff at the hospital will be unveiling a bench there in her honour.

Mrs Short, 62, said: “She was really, really strong. I didn’t know how she did it.

"She made sure she spent those last days putting things in order and helping other people, telling the nurses who she wanted to take over from her in arranging the ball.

“Her colleagues said the thing they would miss about her most was her giggle - you could often hear her before you could see her.

“I think the bench is a really nice idea, they can sit out there in the summer and remember her. I don’t want her to be forgotten. She loved that place and they loved her.”