Last year my son's fiancée's Dad, Karl Clay, suffered a terrible life changing injury where he fractured the C2 bone in his neck. The injury was so bad that it damaged the spinal cord too much and has left him Tetraplegic. This means he cannot move any of his limbs or breathe for himself. He has to live on the ventilator and be cared for 24 hours a day by 2 qualified nurses. Luckily he can eat, drink and communicate perfectly and can still make us laugh daily. So far he has been a complete inspiration to us all and has never let or showed signs of this injury beating him.

The life changing side effects of the injury are extremely difficult to manage and live with. He's unable to do the simplest of tasks unaided, such as scratching his own face.

Recently Karl tried an FES machine which is designed to simulate riding a bike which works his muscles and increases his heart rate. This helps with muscle tone, health of his heart and muscle spasms. Karl fell in love with the machine and from that he realised maybe he could, with the help of the machine keep his body from deteriorating. Unfortunately, the machine alone costs £21,000 which is a huge amount of money. We are looking to raise as much as we can to go towards this, so every contribution matters. Over this summer Karl's family and friends will be taking on big challenges to help raise some money. During the summer we will posting updates on our Facebook, twitter and Instagram pages so please follow us for all the updates and challenges we have taken on and hopefully completed!

I will be taking on my own challenge to help raise money for Karl. In October I will be running the Bournemouth half marathon. I would really appreciate any sponsorship for this event to help raise money to improve the quality of life for a very inspirational man.