The Tom Bowdidge Foundation

We welcome to today the Tom Bowridge Foundation. Tom died young of cancer but his legacy lives on through his family and the amazing work they are doing to help other people cope with the shock of this dreaded illness.  

The Tom Bowridge Foundation relies on donations and grants to do its fine work. You can see in the video attached the contribution that the staff at Sainsbury’s, Tollgate, Colchester, Essex, has made to the Foundation. More power to those guys. If you feel that you can make a contribution you can find the Foundations entry in our database. ome of our entries are 'work in progress' so if they move under a different catagory we apologize, please just bear with us. 

About Tom - from the wwebsite

Tom was the youngest child of Richard and Nikki and a younger brother to Emma. Academically he worked hard and went to the Colchester Royal Grammar School. He was a keen sportsman favouring football and he became an excellent goalkeeper. He loved life especially if it was time spent with his family or friends.  At the age of 18, having just finished his A-levels, he was preparing to go to university to study Classical Civilisation.

However he started suffering stomach pains, diarrhoea and became incredibly tired. He went to the doctors on several occasions and was told it may be Irritable Bowel Syndrome. They did blood tests and told him to return in a couple of weeks. Tom did not improve; in fact his symptoms worsened so much so that his parents took him to the Walk In Centre. Here the doctor thought he may have appendicitis and referred him to the Emergency Admissions Unit in Colchester General Hospital. After a thorough examination Tom was sent for an ultrasound which did indeed show an inflamed appendix. It did however also show something far more suspicious. This prompted an immediate CT scan – a few hours later the bombshell was dropped…..!

The rest of the story is here, and it is a very interesting read: www.tombowdidgefoundation.org/tomx27s-story.html