Thank you for taking the time to visit my Virgin London Marathon 2018 JustGiving page. Where I am going to running as part of the British Heart Foundation #HeartRunners team who all have the shared desire to raise as much money as possible for the British Heart Foundation. We all have our personal reasons for doing this and my little story is below.

I am running this one for my mum, Christine Hatton who suffered with heart issues from 2005 right up until she passed away in September 2017 after a heart failure. For someone who was always so strong and determined, mum was always that person who wouldn't go to the doctors no matter how ill she felt, she didn't want to put on them. Initially back in 2005 mum thought she had a cold, and/or chest infection so she self treated with her trusted Beechams All in One. This didn't shift this "cold", eventually mum felt so rough she wouldn't get out of bed and was being sick throughout the day and night. After a week of this she gave in and asked me to call the doctor, telling me she'd had chest pains for the past week. I decided to call 999 rather than wait for the on call doctor to come. The paramedic arrived and had mum rushed into hospital. It turned out she had suffered a heart attack and not had a cold or chest infection. This was the start of mums heart troubles.

Over the years mum was in and out of hospital, I don't know how many times, enough times for me to say I can give anyone directions to anywhere within UHNM. We are not sure of the exact number of heart attacks mum had, but she has had stents put in to help her, a pacemaker to correct an irregular heartbeat and a built in defibrillator. This pacemaker / defibrillator combo has kept mum alive 3 or 4 times over the past 12 months, where she has had a "heart issue" which has caused her heart to stop, the defibrillator would kick in and shock her back into life, sometimes without mum knowing, other times causing her to black out and collapse.

In March 2017 mum was told that her heart is now so weak that there is nothing else the doctors can do to cure her heart issues and that it is so weak even the defibrillator might actually cause more damage than good if it was to shock her again. This has since been turned off and mum was told she would be lucky to live past the end of 2017.

This is what has spurred me on and motivated me to run the London marathon to raise money for the British Heart Foundation, when I told mum I was running for the British Heart Foundation, she joked in her usual way, saying that it would benefit me in the long run as well. The original plan was to run London and tell mum all about the experience and show off my medal, but now I am running in her memory. It will be a million times harder to run 26.2 miles knowing that I cannot show her my medal at the end. Mum had gone through far more pain and suffering than anyone should have to go through, I want to do my bit to help the British Heart Foundation research teams find better treatments for heart issues, maybe even find a cure for it all together one day.

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