Laura Taylor
Team Get a-Head takes to the road!
Fundraising for The Get A-Head Charitable Trust
Story
Thanks for taking the time to visit our Team Get a-Head page. We have been overwhelmed by the support that everyone has shown so far - thank you!
Update: Thanks to all the support we have had through this page, Sam’s trek and other fundraising events, we have raised over half of our first year’s target, which resulted in the award of a grant from the Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham Charity of £29,500 towards our research programme. Joel Smith, our clinician researcher, is officially appointed and waiting for a start date in October. This is absolutely fantastic news and we are well on the way to our £180,000 target!
The Bromwich family has been thrown a challenge and we are all determined to make a difference - not just to the Bromwich's but also to other families with head and neck cancer - and we need to raise money... £180,000 to be exact to fund some vital cancer research.
We have made a great start on our fund-raising but we still have a way to go so we will be running the Bristol Half Marathon in September and hope that you will sponsor us to help us meet stage one of our fundraising target. Tom's wife Sam is not only trekking for the Bromwich Get a-Head challenge but she has also committed to running the half marathon with us as a "warm up". Now that's impressive and has to be worth a bit of encouragement!
Why are we doing this?
Ed Bromwich, was diagnosed with medullary thyroid cancer at the age of 21. Thanks to the most amazing medical support and pioneering preventative treatment, Ed is now a very healthy 40 years old but in 2003 Ed's twin, Thomas, was also diagnosed, confirming that they share a faulty gene which causes the rare disease familial medullary thyroid carcinoma.
This diagnosis meant that the gene could also be passed on to Ed and Tom's children, who have all had to endure regular painful tests, with four out of the five children so far having their thyroids removed as a preventative measure to stop the disease taking hold. 6-year-old Harry is due to have his operation later this year.
The Bromwich family is, thankfully, healthy and happy but we are raising money to fund a three year research programme to pinpoint the faulty gene and therefore help Ed & Tom's children to avoid passing it on to their children when they grow up and want to start families of their own. Just as importantly, this research will also help other families with this rare disease - we want to gather as much information as possible.
What will we do with the money?
Understandably, you will want to know how your sponsorship money will be spent. We are working with the charity Get a-Head to raise the money for this study alongside the brilliant Professor John Watkinson.
Our researcher will use new genetic techniques that have been successfully used in other rare disorders - but never in thyroid cancer until now - to examine large parts of the family's genome (genetic code) to identify new genes which may play a role in MTC. We are collaborating with other centres around the world and plan to identify and investigate other similar families. We hope that through this a discovery of such genes will not only help the Bromwich's but will have wider implications for everyone with a diagnosis of MTC so it's exciting stuff!
Please do visit the Get a-Head website www.getahead.org.uk for more information on the charity and our Facebook page: The Get a-Head Bromwich Family Challenge to see our other fundraising events.
JustGiving is simple, fast and totally secure way of donating money to a site that keeps your details safe – they’ll never sell them on or send unwanted emails. They send very regular payments through to the Get a-Head office and also make sure that vital Gift Aid is reclaimed on every eligible donation by a UK taxpayer.
Thank you so much for your support!
Team Get a-Head
Update: Thanks to all the support we have had through this page, Sam’s trek and other fundraising events, we have raised over half of our first year’s target, which resulted in the award of a grant from the Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham Charity of £29,500 towards our research programme. Joel Smith, our clinician researcher, is officially appointed and waiting for a start date in October. This is absolutely fantastic news and we are well on the way to our £180,000 target!
The Bromwich family has been thrown a challenge and we are all determined to make a difference - not just to the Bromwich's but also to other families with head and neck cancer - and we need to raise money... £180,000 to be exact to fund some vital cancer research.
We have made a great start on our fund-raising but we still have a way to go so we will be running the Bristol Half Marathon in September and hope that you will sponsor us to help us meet stage one of our fundraising target. Tom's wife Sam is not only trekking for the Bromwich Get a-Head challenge but she has also committed to running the half marathon with us as a "warm up". Now that's impressive and has to be worth a bit of encouragement!
Why are we doing this?
Ed Bromwich, was diagnosed with medullary thyroid cancer at the age of 21. Thanks to the most amazing medical support and pioneering preventative treatment, Ed is now a very healthy 40 years old but in 2003 Ed's twin, Thomas, was also diagnosed, confirming that they share a faulty gene which causes the rare disease familial medullary thyroid carcinoma.
This diagnosis meant that the gene could also be passed on to Ed and Tom's children, who have all had to endure regular painful tests, with four out of the five children so far having their thyroids removed as a preventative measure to stop the disease taking hold. 6-year-old Harry is due to have his operation later this year.
The Bromwich family is, thankfully, healthy and happy but we are raising money to fund a three year research programme to pinpoint the faulty gene and therefore help Ed & Tom's children to avoid passing it on to their children when they grow up and want to start families of their own. Just as importantly, this research will also help other families with this rare disease - we want to gather as much information as possible.
What will we do with the money?
Understandably, you will want to know how your sponsorship money will be spent. We are working with the charity Get a-Head to raise the money for this study alongside the brilliant Professor John Watkinson.
Our researcher will use new genetic techniques that have been successfully used in other rare disorders - but never in thyroid cancer until now - to examine large parts of the family's genome (genetic code) to identify new genes which may play a role in MTC. We are collaborating with other centres around the world and plan to identify and investigate other similar families. We hope that through this a discovery of such genes will not only help the Bromwich's but will have wider implications for everyone with a diagnosis of MTC so it's exciting stuff!
Please do visit the Get a-Head website www.getahead.org.uk for more information on the charity and our Facebook page: The Get a-Head Bromwich Family Challenge to see our other fundraising events.
JustGiving is simple, fast and totally secure way of donating money to a site that keeps your details safe – they’ll never sell them on or send unwanted emails. They send very regular payments through to the Get a-Head office and also make sure that vital Gift Aid is reclaimed on every eligible donation by a UK taxpayer.
Thank you so much for your support!
Team Get a-Head