Thanks for taking the time to visit my JustGiving page.

In January this year, just 3 days after moving to Abu Dhabi to begin her new job as an English teacher, we received a call from Burnley General Hospital informing us my 27 year old daughter Parris had cervical cancer and our world quite literally fell apart.

Just 2 weeks before, Parris attended the Colposcopy Clinic at Burnley General Hospital, where she had laser treatment to remove pre-cancerous cells from her cervix. We didn't know at the time but the doctor took a precautionary biopsy because we had told her Parris was moving to Abu Dhabi for  2 years and we weren't sure when she'd be back in the UK.  Thank goodness she did because the outcome would have been completely different.

To cut a long story short, Parris had a very rare and aggressive type of cancer, which spread in just 3 weeks from 6mm to 3cm, resulting in surgery to remove her entire cervix, half her uterus, all of the surrounding ligaments and 30 lymph nodes.  She's got a long way to go yet but is doing incredibly well; early detection has quite literally saved her life.

Cancer can happen to anyone - it doesn't care about age, gender, skin colour, diet, fitness levels - it's a cold, harsh evil that can kill if not detected early enough.  Statistically, one in 2 of us will develop cancer in our lifetime - FACT.

Having experienced first hand the devastation this disease causes and the subsequent support we received from the team at Burnley Hospital, I want to help CARES raise money towards a much needed new Endoscopy Suite at Burnley General Hospital.  They are on a mission to raise £500,000 so I have agreed to take on the terrifying Via Ferrata Challenge on Sunday 23 June to help towards this and hope I can count on your support!  To see how scary this is check out this video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_BwGKq35uE.

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