My Grandad (Terry Brazel) was 88 years young when he passed away on 5th July 2017. He was an incredible man full of fun, life and wonder. He shared my love of the great outdoors and he had recently returned from a 2 week trip around the USA to visit family, taking in the Grand Canyon on his travels and returning home with many more stories for the vault. He was so wise and wonderful and could fix almost anything that was given to him.

I know, I know he was old in years and so people think that we should have been prepared for his passing, but his fight with this disease was so short and came so unexpectedly that my family were still in shock for months after he had died.

To raise funds for the Lee Spark Foundation (the charity that helped to support us through our ordeal) I will be completing the Port Sunlight 5K on 17th June 2018 and I aim to finish in 30 minutes or less. For those of you that know me, you will know that this is a huge task. I have started training (something that my body is very surprised at!) and I am committed to pushing myself for this amazing cause.

Necrotising Fasciitis arises most often spontaneously (without prior cause) often in people previously in perfect health. Cuts or grazes to the skin may be a source, but such damage may be trivial or may go unnoticed. Infection may progress at inches per hour. The patient rapidly becomes generally unwell, with progressive deterioration out of all proportion to the visible changes in the skin of the affected area. If not treated very quickly, the skin over the infected are becomes dusky and purple; blisters may form and the skin dies. By this stage, infection may have penetrated deep into the underlying tissues. Patients often develop shock, with collapse, low blood pressure, and failure of liver, kidneys and other vital systems. This infection is hard to spot and even harder to cure, the options to my Gramps were severe (amputation) but he deteriorated so quickly that this was simply not an option for long.

Necrotising Fasciitis is not a new disease and was first recorded in the medical journals in the 16th century. It is still a wonder why we are still having to raise the profile after all these years? The Lee Spark Foundation provided much needed information to my Grandad and my family and were able to offer support and advise to us all. We had not previously heard of the disease and there was limited information around too.

The Lee Spark Foundation support group was founded in January 2000 as a result of Doreen Marsden losing her dear son aged 23. His name was ‘Lee Spark’. He died from a Streptococcus milleri infection that developed into a life threatening infection necrotising fasciitis (known as the flesh-eating bug and gangrene).

The aims of the charity are to raise awareness by means of education so that a higher profile of NF may be raised in order that more lives may be saved. Every penny counts so please dig deep and help to fund more research into this life threatening infection.