Almost exactly one year ago, I was due to run this 10k in Manchester. Many of you will know that I couldn’t complete it because in January 2014 I was diagnosed with Guillain-Barre Syndrome – an auto-immune condition, in which nerve function is progressively lost from the feet upwards.

People often asked me what happened. It is not an easy story to tell, but I want to share some of it here to honour the help and support I was given by friends and family, and to help any others who are suffering with GBS to know that there is a way out. 

In short, GBS is a disease which rapidly robs you all of your ability to walk, talk, breathe, eat and swallow. For some, it is fatal. For others, it is a shadow cast for the rest of their life. The lucky ones recover practically everything that they lost.

Over a matter of days, I watched as my body simply shut down. I felt helpless, desperate and scared. Although there are many difficult memories that stay with me to this day, the most painful is the second day I spent in intensive care. 

Quite suddenly, I became panicky and agitated and my breathing deteriorated. Over the course of an hour I could feel my lungs give in so that I could only breathe with the top portion of my chest.  I had to make a choice about being ventilated – something I had fought hard against until that point – but with James and my family I decided it was time. I was terrified and felt certain that I would die. I could barely draw the breath to talk, but very slowly, I asked James to give my engagement ring to Logan and my eternity ring to Martha. I told him that he must marry someone else when I had gone. The doctor put a mask over my face to sedate me and I remember thinking that I could stop trying now. It was time to let go. I stopped trying to breathe. 

In the event, I was ventilated for two weeks until my body relearned how to breathe. Gradually, painstakingly, I regained the other functions I had lost. I learned to read aloud again with Logan sitting on my lap, I worked hard in my rehab gym taking all the sessions I could get to relearn how to walk. 

A year on from being allowed home, I am piecing my life back together. I can look after my children again now, I can run and cook and even consider my professional recovery too. 

The story I want to tell is not one of sorrow, pity or helplessness, although there have been plenty of those emotions along the way. I genuinely believe that this whole experience, this enforced pause of my life, has made me stronger than I was before. That’s the real reason for taking part in this run. 

I want to prove to myself that I can do it, and prove to others with GBS or similar conditions that you don’t simply have to accept the disability. I don’t believe that bad things happen for a specific reason, but I do believe that I have to make something good of what happened to me. All of this can’t be worth nothing, it can’t go to waste. 

And so thank you for reading my story and for supporting this effort to raise funds for others with GBS. If I’ve learned anything from it, it is that you can’t ever know what is round the corner. On the day I first went to the GP with numbness in my toes, back in January 2014, my kids rushed out the door to nursery and I didn’t kiss them goodbye. I wasn’t to know it would be nearly three months before we slept under the same roof again. Now I don’t let them out of my sight without giving them a kiss. Because you just never know.

Thank you.

Thanks for taking the time to visit my JustGiving page.

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.