On the 15th July 2017, my beautiful Grandma passed away in a quiet room at the Marie Curie Hospice in Edinburgh. She was fortunate enough to be moved from the hospital and given a room there a few weeks before she died, and for that I will be forever grateful.

I fundraise for a different charity every year, and this year I would love to raise money for the Marie Curie Hospice. Specifically, I would like to raise money for some comfortable chairs for the rooms in the hospice. My family and I could not have been treated any better during our time there, but towards the end of my Grandma’s life, we did not want to leave her side. This sometimes meant sitting on plastic chairs for over 16 hours a day, or overnight. I wondered at the time if having a few more comfortable chairs around would make a small difference to a family’s physical exhaustion at such an emotionally exhausting time.

As well as this, it costs Marie Curie ~£60,000 per day to run its nine hospices across the UK. By sponsoring me, you are funding care and support for people living with a terminal illness, and their families. Marie Curie believe everyone living with a terminal illness should be able to get the most from the time they have left, and 2/3 of the money Marie Curie receives is from people's donations, with the remaining 1/3 coming from the NHS. Without these donations, Marie Curie wouldn’t be able to provide vital care and support to people who need them at an extremely difficult time.

I wanted to do something a bit different this year and push myself mentally and physically in a new way. I thought it would be a challenge (and relevant to why I'm raising the money) if I were to sit on a plastic chair for 24-36 hours (TBC). I will be allowed to eat and drink, have a bathroom break/stretch for 5 minutes every 6 hours; but I won’t be allowed to sleep or leave the chair otherwise (unless there’s a fire). Can I also point out that I am extremely fidgety and find it near impossible to stay/sit still, so this will be my Everest.

I will be doing this challenge next month (date/place TBC), and I have set up this fundraising page in which I can use the funds raised to directly purchase some chairs and donate them in my Grandma’s name, and give the rest to the hospice for its day to day running.

I could never put a price on the compassion shown to my Grandma and my family during an agonising time, but raising money for families who are going through hell is a start. Please donate a few pounds if you can!