In support of one of my best childhood school friends, I will be completing the South Coast Challenge, walking 100km continuous from Eastbourne, past Brighton and onto Arundel. We will be fundraising for Antony Nolan’s stem cell registry and kindly as for support in raising awareness. 

Our friendship group feel very lucky to lead a normal life, however this was not always the case. Tom was diagnosed with leukaemia in 2001 where he received a life saving bone marrow transplant from one of 64 matches on Anthony Nolan’s registry a year later. Without the stem cell registry, there would be a missing piece to our squad and we feel this walk is a nice nod to how far Tom and his family has come since his illness. Anthony Nolan is an international registry where potential donors- completely voluntary- are enlisted for patients with blood cancers. 

Raising awareness and funds for Anthony Nolan is especially important to me as my girlfriend donated her bone marrow in 2019; I am privileged to see the heart wrenching  affects of a stem cell donation from both donor and recipient parties. 

Despite this, Tom is still as irritating as ever and we look forward to returning the years of mickey taking we’ve been subject to cajole him along!