Matt Nicholson has been a good friend of ours for over 20 years, mostly through many cold Thursday nights attempting to play football.

Matt and his family, including his wife Vicky have been going through the worst time imaginable over the last few years caring for their son Joshua following his diagnosis with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia in August 2014 when he was only 5 years old.

He went through lots of treatment including a range of chemotherapies. During this time he had 3 episodes of acute pancreatitis as a side effect of some of the drugs used. His journey continued for 2.5 years and he was beginning to get his life back. Very sadly he became unwell in January 2017 and it was confirmed that he had relapsed and his leukaemia had come back. He had to have immediate high dose chemo which affected him really badly and he spent 8 weeks in hospital. He now faces radiotherapy followed by a stem cell transplant. Luckily, his baby brother is a match and is going to be his donor. Josh will remain in isolation until he is well enough to go back home. This could be at least 2 months if there are no complications.

Both Matt and Vicky have given up work to be at his side. Matt is self employed which means there isn't much income at all coming in to help pay for their normal household bills, let alone the extra funds required for Josh's care up to this point.

In addition to this, once Josh is finally allowed home his house needs to have adjustments made to keep him safe and well. His house needs to be thoroughly cleaned so there is no dust, he needs a new mattress and bedding and everything that is old needs to be cleared out so that their home can be kept as clean and dust free as possible.

Chris Bartlam, Scott Goldingay and I will be completing the Wolf Run on Saturday June 3rd in order to raise urgently needed funds to contribute towards helping Matt and Vicky with all the costs required at this difficult time.