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All done - 14 hours 09 minutes. Many thanks for your support!
Earlier this year my brother, Mike, was diagnosed with a rare form of blood cancer called Waldenstrom's Macroglobulinemia. It affects about 400 people in the UK each year. Because it is rare, there is little funded research into its causes and treatment. As a result, the most effective drugs for its treatment are not approved in the UK and therefore not available either on the NHS or via health insurance. Treatment is self funded by the sufferer. There is simply not yet enough research to validate the drugs. By donating to WMUK, you will be directly contributing to the funding of research into this disease which will improve survival rates and the availability of treatment in the UK.
To encourage you to donate, I will be taking part in a Channel Relay swim this Sunday 17th September, starting at about 6am. If successful, we should arrive on a French beach sometime on Sunday night. As a team of six, each of us will swim for an hour in rotation until we get to France, meaning each of us will do 2 or 3 legs of the Channel. Although, nowhere near as demanding as a solo swim, its still a fair challenge. Next time you fly over the Channel, imagine jumping out of a small fishing boat in just a pair of Speedo's, in the middle of the busiest shipping lane in the world and swimming for an hour!
We've got a top team including Alex Newey, Martyn Thomas, Mark Lucas, Cathy Taylor and Connie Simons. You can track progress on Sunday at www.channelswimmingassociation.com/tracking and select our boat which is called Rowena.