Thanks for taking the time to visit my JustGiving page..

Make yourself a brew, have a seat and read my story.. 

On 2nd March 2015, I was told the words nobody wants to hear "I'm sorry, it's cancer". I had been having abdominal pains for a while, scans had shown a "mass", which was thought to be a more innocent neurofibroma (I also have a genetic condition called Neurofibromatosis). A few months after first seeing my GP, I had a biopsy which showed it was in fact cancer. And not just any cancer, a very rare one called Gastro-Intestinal Stromal Tumour. (GIST). GIST is extremely rare, affecting around 900 patients per year in the UK. 

Due to my underlying condition, my tumour fell into the PAWS-GIST sub group -Paediatric, Adolescent, Wildtype or Syndromic GIST - with mine being Wildtype GIST, affecting just 10% of all those diagnosed with GIST. 

GIST Cancer UK have been a huge support to me and my family, and many others like me. They provide support, research and through the PAWSGIST  initiative   https://www.pawsgistclinic.org.uk/clinic.htm provide a specialist clinic in Cambridge to hopefully help the next person diagnosed with GIST. 

2020 marked my 5 year "cancerversary" and I initially hoped to do a few events throughout the year to try and raise a bit of much needed funds. But we all know what happened in 2020.... !  I then saw a social media post asking for volunteers to take part in the Virtual London Marathon, so signed up (and roped Simon into it too!). Simon has run the Yorkshire Marathon twice before, but this will be my first marathon.

In addition to all the problems I've had with GIST, I have also had numerous issues caused by Neurofibromatosis (Nf), resulting in multiple surgeries to my leg, including inserting a steel pin in place of severely damaged bone, bone graft to replace the missing bone, and an Illizarov Fixator to help lengthen my leg by around 1.5" (the multiple surgeries had caused a leg length discrepancy). My left leg isn't as strong as the "average" leg, and my right leg has a large section of fibula missing from the bone graft, so a marathon will be tough... but then so am I! 

Thank you for reading, and thank you for any donations. 

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