In March of 2017 I was driving back from a festival in London when I suddenly couldn't breathe. I went to A and E and was told I was having a panic attack and to go home and calm down. 

Four Months, three ambulance call outs, a bone marrow biopsy and a month long hospital stay later, I was sent home and left with no answers to the illness that was ruining my life. 

In November 2017, I saw a private specialist who diagnosed me, after one consultation, with Mast Cell Activation Syndrome.

If more people, both medical and public, knew about MCAS then it would be so much easier for people to get a diagnosis and treatment. 

What is Mast Cell Activation Syndrome?
Mast cells, a type of blood cell, play an important role in the body’s immune system. They reside in all body tissues and form part of the body’s initial defence system. Mast cells react to foreign bodies and injury by releasing a variety of potent chemical mediators, such as histamine, when activated. In a healthy person these chemicals will act beneficially to protect and heal the body, but in a person with MCAS these same chemicals are inappropriately triggered and released and have a negative effect on the body. Amongst the triggers are a variety of different foods, exercise, chemicals, fragrances and stress. Many sufferers struggle to identify their triggers and continue to discover new triggers for many years after diagnosis.

MCAS forms part of a spectrum of mast cell disorders involving proliferation and/or excessive sensitivity of mast cells, it has been identified since 2007. It features inappropriate mast cell activation with little or no increase in the number of mast cells, unlike in Mastocytosis*. MCAS causes a wide range of unpleasant, sometimes debilitating, symptoms in any of the different systems of the body, frequently affecting several systems at the same time. The onset of MCAS is often sudden, affecting both children and adults, sometimes in family groups, mimicking many other conditions and presenting a wide-range of different symptoms that can be baffling for both the patient and their physician. Often there are no obvious clinical signs since MCAS confounds the anatomy-based structure underpinning the traditional diagnostic approach. Very often Mast Cell Activation Syndrome is hiding in plain sight.

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