Hi my name is James Donlan and I will be running liverpool marathons 26.2 miles for Emma Hoolin on the 9th of October 2011

My 8 year old son Sam is in Lily's class (Emma's sister) and obviously as a parent myself I cannot imagine what they are going through and wanted to raise money from my run towards such a great cause.  Every penny counts and however small please donate then Emma gets the chance to live.

 

This is Emma's own story:

My name is Emma Hoolin, and I have a childhood cancer that is very aggressive. It is called neuroblastoma.  My Mummy took me to hospital in February because I had felt very poorly for a long time, and they found a big, big lump inside my tummy.

Before they could begin treatment, they had to do all sorts of tests and take samples from inside me.  I've never had operations before and I didn't like it.  I still don't.  They put me under big noisy machines to 'scan' my insides, they took samples from the centre of my bones to make sure the cancer wasn't in there, and they took a sample from the lump in my tummy.  But this made the lump bleed and it began to swell up so much I couldn't breathe properly .  It look a long time to fix this, I had to sit up for weeks in hospital with an oxygen tube before I could start chemotherapy, (something that was supposed to make me better).  It just made me sick.  Really sick. 

After the last cycle of chemotherapy my kidney became very ill.  The doctor told mummy I had renal failure, the chemotherapy had caused a lot of damage to it.  I had to go into HDU for weeks and weeks.  After this, the doctors took out the big lump in my tummy, I was in the operating theatre for 6 1/2 hours.  After a few days I was allowed home, but started having seizures.  I was soon back in hospital again.  One of the drugs they gave me to bring my blood pressure down sent me unconscious, but the doctors fixed this and made me conscious again. After this I had to go through High Dose Chemotherapy.  This made me even sicker, I had an infection and although I couldn't eat or drink I kept being sick for days.

  On 10th October I have to have radiotherapy.

Mummy and Daddy spent all that time with me in hospital.  I watched them crying, I haven't ever seen them do that before and it made me cry.  I've never been so sick.  I never want to be that sick ever again. There is an antibody treatment in America that can stop this thing called Cancer, from coming back.  If the cancer comes back they won't be able to do anything more for me and I'll die.  I don't want to die and I don't want to see Mummy or Daddy cry again.  Please help me to get this treatment.  

The doctor said I have to have this treatment within days of me finishing radiotherapy so I don't have much time.  Please help us to raise the money.  If everybody who saw this just gave £1, It could save my life.  Please help me.