On the 2nd of March 2012, I woke up at a friends house. I'd stayed over the night before after playing some games with him and his housemate. In the morning he was showing me all his favourite scenes from Braveheart (again) when I lost all the feeling in my right arm.

I have a few memories here and there (my clearest being of me being sick over the side of the hospital bed and going straight back to sleep, you're welcome cleaning staff), but my first was about 3 days later when they told me that I'd had a stroke due to an AVM in my brain.

After 14 days in the hospital I was discharged, and I was also told the unpleasant news that the mess of veins in my brain was too complicated to cut out, and that they could burst at any second.

Then I got a letter from the Royal Hallamshire hospital in Sheffield asking me to come in for a consultation. They said they would perform Gamma-Knife surgery on the AVM to seal the veins up over a period of 2-5 years. Two years down the line, the AVM has been mostly "obliterated", and soon the tiny portion that's left will be gone. 

Without the hospital and the people there, I might not be around now for you to enjoy my wonderful company, and so now I want to repay them in some small way by dragging myself around a 10 mile course to raise some money for them.

Seriously, they are amazing people and any support we can give them will result in new ways to treat previously untreatable malformations of the brain, so get giving! The money will be going to the stereotactic radio surgery fund at the Royal Hallamshire hospital in Sheffield.