In March 2019 I ran my first (and only) half Marathon just to see if I could, and I did! In 2hrs 16mins 

The furthest I have ran since then is 6.2miles, and next year I want to run it in under 2hrs 10mins 

Here is my story as to why I have chosen this charity... 

In September 2017 my Mother passed away after a 1.5yr battle with ovarian cancer. 1 week later I gave birth to my daughter. 1 month after this my Dad was admitted to Hospital with pneumonia  and was then sent home two weeks later. In December 2017 he was admitted to hospital again with pneumonia  and was sent home two weeks later. 

In between these admissions it became apparent that my Dad was struggling with Day to Day life, Washing, cleaning, cooking and I was having to make the 3hr round trip with a newborn at least three days a week to help with general tasks, but his doctors wouldn’t listen to me and neither would the Doctors at the hospital when I tried to stress something was wrong. Apparently it was the infection from pneumonia making him confused. 

We had Dad stay over for the Christmas and whilst with us he soiled the bed... a lot, he didn’t make it to the toilet in time ever, he struggled to dress himself, and couldn’t make it from one end of the room to the other without stopping for breath (he also suffered from COPD) so when we took him home after Christmas I got the Doctor to make a home visit. Amazingly to be told that my Dad was fine!! The doctor visited a second time early January and then 3 days later, after what would have been my Mum’s birthday I had a phone call from his doctor informing me he didn’t think my Dad had moved from his chair since he last visited and had just a few days to live if he didn’t go to the hospital now, sadly my Dad had no care in him and despite me begging him to go he refused. Luckily he had a fall and cut his head and the triage nurse found him and got him sent off straight away! He was then in hospital till late February when they finally diagnosed him with Dementia and he got placed in a Dementia home, sadly still far away from where I lived as we could not afford a Private Care home for him, but we of course made the visits non the less. 

Even with the help of Social Service funding the funds were so high it ended up eating up what ever savings Mum and Dad had left. Dementia care is the most expensive care there is and sadly some children have to go through much worse than me and have to sell their family home just to cover the fees. 

I was given no information about Dementia when my Father went into care and I don’t feel like I got any support into understanding what Dementia actually meant. 

It was only when my Dad started to show worse signs early 2019 and sadly lost his life in May this year that On his death certificate the cause of death was “Dementia” I didn’t even know this was a cause of death, I just thought it was memory loss when you got old. 

Having to watch your parent loose their wellbeing and senses is terrible, lucky for me my Dad wasn’t as bad as some, typical repeating off the same question over and over again but his short term memory loss was gone. If we visited him in the afternoon an hour after we left he would forget we had come which was a very hard to deal with. Especially when you are grieving, you start to wonder if he even knew you and the family went to visit him. 

I am aiming to run the half in my PB time to hopefully raise more awareness for this awful disease and create more awareness that it’s not just “memory loss” it’s a terminal illness and more resources need to be available 

MThanks for taking the time to visit my JustGiving page.

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