Lupus is an autoimmune disease that causes someone's immune system to attack their own body. It can attack any part of the body, at any time, and is currently incurable and unpredictable.

Lupus affects 1 in 750 people (90% of whom are women), making it more prevalent than MS, leukemia or muscular dystrophy. Yet doctors and scientists don't really know what causes lupus, why people get it how it works... in fact they know very little! As such support for lupus patients is thin on the ground – many doctors don’t feel they know enough about lupus to provide effective advice and family and friends rarely know what the condition is or entails.

Your donation could help change that.

I'm raising money for Lupus UK, a charity that works hard to provide much needed support to lupus patients through regional community groups and a dedicated youth group.

What am I going to do?

 

I'm going to sweat through two sporting events. First, I'm going to run the Wimbledon Common half marathon in aid of Lupus UK. Then I'll row the same distance (21km) on a rowing machine in a gym in aid of St Thomas' Lupus Trust (fundraising page).

 

Note that I was due to run the Edinburgh half marathon in May, but after breaking a rib falling off my bike, I've had to postpone the events, and I am instead running in Wimbledon at the end of July.

 

Finally, I'm also going to blog about lupus on The Butterfly Effect, a blog site that my girlfriend Ellie and I have set up to share our experiences and learning about lupus.

 

Why am I doing this?

 

My girlfriend Ellie was diagnosed with lupus in May 2012 and as she writes in the introduction to the site: "one of the hardest things about having lupus (for me anyway) is being surrounded by people who don't know what lupus is". So then, these fundraising efforts and the blogging is our attempt to do our part to change that.

 

Just a half marathon?

 

With a half marathon row on top of this, I don’t think my right knee can take much more than a half marathon run too!

 

As for big print: Gift Aid if you're a UK taxpayer!