I am running the London Marathon on 24th April 2016 on behalf of The Brain Tumour Charity because I survived brain cancer but so many people don’t.

In December 2007, I was diagnosed with a brain tumour - Glioblastoma Multiforme, Grade 4.  It's known as GBM for short, which sounds like a weapon of mass destruction, and it is.  If you google this type of cancer, you'll quickly find two things - (1) it is a highly aggressive form of cancer; and (2) it is deadly.  My initial prognosis was 6 months. 

Like a lot of people with brain tumours, I had few symptoms to warn me that anything was seriously wrong... minor things: headaches; the twitch of a muscle in the back of my throat that would last seconds then disappear. It wasn’t until 4 months after the birth of my daughter that I ran to see a doctor, when I started getting a sensation of numbness across the left side of my face and then down my body.

I was living in India at the time, so I was lucky enough to get a neuro consult very quickly, followed immediately by an MRI that showed a large mass that didn’t belong in my skull.  I was in hospital 4 days later for surgery to remove it.  It was confirmed malignant, and chemotherapy and radiation treatment started two weeks later.

You hear a lot of statistics when you’re first diagnosed with cancer... after I passed my 6-month sell-by date, the one that stuck with me for the following few years was that 95% of people with GBM die 5-6 years after first diagnosis.  That kind of statistic is devastating.  For me it meant that I had a 5% chance of seeing my daughter reach 6 years old - it made me focus and with the help and support of many people, I made my way through treatment and then recovery, by just putting one foot in front of the other and moving forward. 

A dear friend told me that the road to recovery was "a marathon not a sprint".  Those words stayed with me and, when I returned home to the UK from India, running the London Marathon seemed a fitting way to  mark how far I have come - in April 2016 I will celebrate 100 months since first diagnosis - and I figured, I could do some good along the way...

My reason for choosing to run on behalf of The Brain Tumour Charity probably seems quite obvious, what’s not so obvious or well known is that:

• Brain tumours are the biggest cancer killer of children and adults under 40.
  
• Less than 20% of those diagnosed with brain cancer survive beyond 5 years.
• In 2014, brain tumours received 1.5% (£7.7million) of the £498 million UK spend on research into cancer - at the current rate, it could take 100 years to catch up with developments in other diseases.
• The only way to improve diagnosis, treatment and management of brain tumours is research and The Brain Tumour Charity is the UK’s largest dedicated funder of research into brain tumours.

I am running the London Marathon 2016 to achieve two things, both driven by the fact that: I or you or someone you know, may need help one day, should a brain tumour rear its ugly head. 

1. I want to raise money for The Brain Tumour Charity because they rely 100% on voluntary donations - so that they can do more of the work that they do - saving lives through research, forging the path of a different way of treating terminally ill patients who have run out of options and, by no means least, the work they do providing support for everyone affected to improve quality of life not only for sufferers but also their carers/families - because as with all WMDs there is massive collateral damage.
2. I want to help raise awareness so people learn to recognise symptoms and have the chance of a better prognosis with an early diagnosis – over 9,300 people are diagnosed with a brain tumour every year, but just as many are not recorded so that figure could be considerably higher. If you would like more information on symptoms you can find it right here.

This is my first marathon and running has never featured large in my life before now.  Since I first decided to run a whopping 26.2 miles, I’ve worked hard to make sure I’m fit for the challenge.  Please show your support  : you can help me raise funds by sponsoring me in the form of a donation by simply clicking the donate button at the top of the page; and/or you can help me raise awareness by sharing this page as far and as wide as you possibly can.

Thank you for taking the time to visit and read my JustGiving page.  If you’d like to sponsor me by donating and cannot see your local currency please select one of the alternative currencies and the equivalent amount. It takes a little bit of maths, but please don't let that put you off!

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Donating through JustGiving is simple, fast and totally secure.  Your details are safe with JustGiving – they’ll never sell them on or send unwanted emails. Once you donate, they’ll send your money directly to the charity. So it’s the most efficient way to donate – saving time and cutting costs for the charity.