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From the 1st March 2022, I will be undertaking personal challenges that revolve around the number 68.  I will be doing this for AT LEAST 68 days, or as long as it takes to raise the money we need to for this fantastic charity who are providing lifelines to people with rare cancers.

Sam is my friend, and an awesome friend too - thoughtful, funny, kind and loyal.  She is mother to my Godson, and is Godmother to my children, and is a 54-year-old married mum of two who works for the NHS.

Sam has cancer.  A very rare one.  I hate writing it, but I can’t tell her story without telling you that.

She has been treated for two different cancers three times, since 2013. At first surgically, then with chemotherapy, stem cell transplants and immunotherapy. The treatment has not come without a significant physical price for Sam, and the lifelong impacts have been too numerous to mention here. But none of this fundraising is for Sam, it’s to help other people who find themselves in a similar situation as the one she has found herself in..

To say that Sam has had a tough time over the last 9 years is putting it mildly. Most of us can only imagine what it is like getting cancer once, let alone twice. Imagine what it would like to then be told you have an extremely rare form of cancer - an Eptihelioid Trophoblastic Tumour - in an extremely rare group of cancers - Gestational Trophoblastic Diseases. Pretty rubbish. Then imagine what it would be like to hear that the treatment that you need for your extremely rare cancer is not funded by the NHS because….well…. It’s just too rare a cancer, which means there aren’t enough people with this cancer to prove that the treatment works, so the treatment doesn’t get approved for funding by NICE. Seems a pretty rubbish trap to be caught in, i’m sure you’ll agree.

Sam was out of options until she came across a charity called H&T - they are literally a lifeline for people in this situation. They will fund treatment for cancer, when the NHS funding isn’t there, and when they believe the treatment will help the patient. They do this to be able to generate data to support the treatments ultimately becoming approved and funded by NICE. If it becomes approved then people in Sam’s position won’t run out of NHS funded treatments. The funds we are raising will go to future cancer sufferers who have also run out of options. What H&T ask of their beneficiaries (and their friends and families) is that they raise funds to help fellow travellers on this dark and lonely path. So that’s what we’re doing.

We will all be taking on personal physical challenges based around the number 68. “Why 68” we hear your cry? Because that number keeps cropping up in Sam’s cancer journey - it is 68 miles between Sam’s home and her current cancer centre in London, which she has to travel to every time she has treatment. She spent a total of 68 days in Oxford hospitals. Another 68 days in Hammersmith hospital. And 68 days in Charing Cross Hospital. So you can see why we are making it a 68 Pick N Mix!

I will be walking, running, cycling, skipping, squatting, sitting up, burpee’ing - whatever is a challenge and as long as it is based around the number 68. The options are endless and I’m going to keep going for AT LEAST 68 days, or however long it takes to reach Sam’s target.

There are so many good causes out there, this is just one of many, and a lesser known one.  I hope that you never have a need for this charity, but it is only by helping their fundraising that we can make that more of a certainty.  I hope that you will feel able to donate to this fantastic cause.

If you have been inspired by Sam’s story and the work of the H&T Clients Charitable Trust, then why not join us! Set up your own page and link it to this team and you too can help to ensure that future cancer sufferers have the treatment they need available to them on the NHS.

If you’d like more information about the work of the H&T Charitable Trust, or about Gestational Trophoblastic Diseases, these links may help:

https://www.harrisandtrotter.co.uk/about/charitable-trust/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gestational_trophoblastic_disease

THANK YOU for taking the time to read this, and for any support that you can give us, no matter how big or small.

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