Johnnie's Not eating out in January

Thanks for taking the time to visit my JustGiving page.

As many of you will now know Eilish is suffering from chronic end stage liver failure and a transplant is inevitable in due course.  As her illness has deteriorated she has been under the care of the amazing teams in the Liver Unit Royal Victoria Hospital and we, as a family, have been availing of the help and support provided not only by the transplant coordinators in the RVH and in Kings College Hospital in London, but also the amazing team  of volunteers based at the RVH Liver Support Group.

To show our support and gratitude for this terrific group of people we wanted to give something back and do a wee bit of fundraising. Eilish kicked this off back in October with donations to the Liver Support Group in lieu of presents for her 50th birthday and has donated £200 already and plans to do more when her health allows.

As you all know, due to my own chronic health conditions, I am limited to my personal fundraising activities, I cannot run marathons, abseil down the Europa or zip line across the Lagan....but that isn’t going to stop me doing my bit.

You will all know my love of Chinese food and eating out in general. So..for the month of January I am not going to eat out at all. And no takeaways either .Those of you who know me will know exactly how big a challenge this will be for me.  I am instead going to donate the equivalent amount of money to the Liver Support Group. To give you a clue of the scale of our spending, in the month of December alone we spent as a family £700, (however this did include our Christmas break in the Lodge hotel over Xmas.)

I am sure you will agree this is a staggering amount of money and my aim is to raise a minimum of £500 to send to Liver Support Group to allow them to continue the amazing work they do for all those who suffer from all types of chronic liver disease.

With your support we can easily do this. I have started the fund with a personal pledge of £300. Every single penny helps and every single penny will go direct to the RVH. liver support unit.

So come on folks, dig deep, hoke down the back of the sofa, clear out the change tray in the car or simply just donate the price of ONE coffee. It would mean so much to us and make such a difference to the Liver Unit who are often overlooked for charitable donations.


I have watched Eilish fight this disease with all her might and as a family it has taken a huge toll on us.  I have no doubt that many others are in the same boat. I am attaching a link to my Just Giving page if any of you wish to donate and help us raise funds we would be forever grateful.

There is a huge stigma in society when the word cirrhosis is mentioned, everyone automatically thinks it is alcohol or drug related. Eilish’s personal case is caused by an auto immune disease called PBC and along with so many other auto immune variations is becoming more and more prevalent now putting additional strain on already stretched resources. This is our way of highlighting that there but for the grace of god go anyone of us or our family . We never in a million years thought this time last year that Eilish would be on the transplant list now but it just goes to show, no one knows what is round the corner. THATS what makes this so personal and so important an issue and we want to raise awareness.


Donating through JustGiving is simple, fast and totally secure. Your details are safe with JustGiving - they'll never sell them on or send unwanted emails. Once you donate, they'll send your money directly to the charity. So it's the most efficient way to donate - saving time and cutting costs for the charity.

Oh just one exception. We were given a night away in a hotel last week in January so (un)fortunately I will have to eat out that night. But as a forfeit whatever I spend that night I will match as an additional donation.