My Mum, Judy Naunton, died of Leukaemia (AML) in September 2010. 

This is not the first time I've asked for help to raise funds for Leukaemia charities but recently, a friend of mine, Oliver Goodyear, also succumbed to the disease; he passed away in his mid-30s in July 2015, leaving behind his wife, Laura, and their four-year-old daughter, Mary. Life just isn't fair.

Leukaemia is a horrible illness. Mum battled against it for ten months. During that time she had three courses of chemotherapy which got rid of the cancerous cells, and a bone marrow transplant to make sure they couldn't come back. Although the treatment was successful in tackling the root cause, it ravaged Mum's body: for much of that time she could only 'eat' through an intravenous tube, she was frequently sick, she lost her hair of course, and by the end she was so weak that she couldn't stand, walk, or even sit up in bed without help. The illness and the treatment left her horribly exposed to infection and one day she caught something which affected her lungs, stopped her body from taking Oxygen on board, and just over a day after hospital staff noticed there was something very wrong, she slipped away.

The staff at Kingston Hospital and the Royal Marsden in Sutton were fantastic, but Mum really suffered for those ten months. We all did our best to keep her spirits - and ours - up, but it wasn't easy. We would have done anything to have made her life more comfortable and there's not much I wouldn't do now to have her back.