Thanks for taking the time to visit my JustGiving page for Team Trailtrikers.

I hope to be the first person in the UK to complete the Oxfam Trail Walk in a wheelchair in July. Not only this, but I am due to have a stem cell transplant in May this year!

For those of you who know me, you know that I have something called POEMS Syndrome, which is an incredibly rare disease affecting the blood, which in turn creates all sorts of problems within the body, in my case I mainly have polyneuropathy, which in 2014 put me in a wheelchair, which I am yet to get out of.

After finally been diagnosed in January 2015 with a malignant plasmacytoma, and then finding out I have POEMS syndrome, I spent three months in hospital in central London having radiotherapy and low-dose chemotherapy, followed by three months at a neuro rehabilitation centre. There is a chance that I could develop Myeloma in the future, and so it has been decided that I will have a stem cell transplant which should hopefully prevent this, and also enable the symptoms of poems to reduce or disappear. The end goal for me will be be to walk again! I am due to go in for the stem cell transplant early May.

Towards the end of last year our good friend Andy Blair suggested that my husband Mark join him and a few others in the Oxfam Trail Walk, 100km in 30 hours taking in the South Downs from Petersfield to Brighton.

Mark and I would normally do something like this together, as we are quite competitive and love being challenged. So in our unique style Mark suggested that I take part as well, in a wheelchair! Not only that, but I have yet to go through a full stem cell transplant before the event. So naturally I said yes!!!

The team are amazing and everyone said yes straight away, even though it would make their treck so much more difficult. I am so grateful to them but just really hope I am well enough to be able to take part and complete the challenge. If you are going to have a goal, you may as well have a big one!

We need to raise £3000 as a team in order to take part and raise vital funds for Oxfam. Please please please if you can donate that would be fab.

You will also be able to keep up-to-date with my treatment, as I am also using this as a way to promote POEMS Syndrome as well as show people what going through chemotherapy and a stem cell transplant is like. So many people are scared before something like this (me included), but this is a great way for me to show people what it will really be like. I will be blogging and uploading videos to YouTube. Prior to treatment, as I will be losing all my hair, I will also be shaving my hair off, and donating it to the Princess Trust, which make wigs for children. We will also be documenting this and there will be a video, hopefully funny and not sad which I will upload to our YouTube channel.

You can keep up-to-date with all of this on our Trailtrikers website, which Andy has done an amazing job of setting up.

http://www.trailtrikers.com/

Donating through JustGiving is simple, fast and totally secure. Your details are safe with JustGiving – they’ll never sell them on or send unwanted emails. Once you donate, they’ll send your money directly to the charity. So it’s the most efficient way to donate – saving time and cutting costs for the charity.

Thanks everyone! XXX