Jack Sanders is a dear friend of a dear friend of mine. i have heard many good things about Jack and his strong fighting spirit and how he has battled the most evil disease for a number of years now. I want to do something to help, not just something minor but something major that really pushes me to my limits. Here's my crazy idea, which i am determined to accomplish all in the name of Jack!

I propose to swim 80 miles in 35 days. To be exact that is almost 4 x times the distance people do in the channel swim (Dover to Calais), it is 5,120 lengths of a 25 metre pool and if I swim every day it will mean i need to do 147 lengths of the 25 metre pool. If i have a day off in this period It means I am buggered really because the day after I will have to swim 294 lengths the day after! To give you an idea of the challenge on my body - I am a 'big lad' and have always fluctuated trying to keep my weight down, I look at a cake and gain a stone! This is going to be harder for me given I have more to carry through the pool. I am estimating this is going to be around 20 hours of swimming a week for 5 weeks....a big commitment. please support me in my challenge and help Jack have many more years with his little girl, family and friends.

This is Jack's story:

Jack is 34 years old, lived and worked in Mansfield all his life, he has a beautiful little girl who he adores and equally adored him, here is his story.

Jack was diagnosed with brain cancer just over 5 years ago when his daughter was just 4 . He was first diagnosed with a benign grade 2 glioma and underwent an 8 hour awake craniotomy to remove it which resulted in a "complete excision" and was apparently a success!! He was told to go home recover and live a normal life!!! Jack returned home and remained healthy and well up until late 2014 when the tumour returned this time as a malignant grade 4 glioblastoma ( the worst kind) by February 2015 he underwent another awake craniotomy this time for 9 hours to debulk it as it was no longer possible to get a "complete excision" this surgery resulted in the loss of use of his left arm for 6 months due to nerve damage, he also began having epileptic seizures. He was told after the operation that his only option was to undergo an aggressive treatment of radio and chemotherapy But ultimately it was time to go home and get his affairs in order as his future did not look promising- not an option for him. Jack has been an inspiration and has recovered well regaining the use of his left arm and his driving license and has been back to living a relatively normal life receiving stable scan results now for the last 2 years, Unfortunately recent scans now show that the tumour is active again only this time round it's inoperable!!! With chemotherapy being the only option with very limited chances of success and a good chance of making it even more aggressive!!! Fortunately Jack is a fighter and refuses to give up, he has appointment at John Hopkins neuro centre in USA for a second opinion and discussing alternative treatments such as immunotherapy, vaccines, dendtric cell therapy..... However not all these are available in the UK and are unfortunately rather expensive.

We want to give him the best chance possible alongside the best treatment we can get so he can see his beautiful daughter grow up.