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So please sponsor me now!

I'll be attempting to ride from Edinburgh to St Andrews - 67 miles! - on Saturday 21st June. My dad's doing it too and we're hoping to raise money for LEPRA who work to address leprosy prevention and treatment and other diseases of poverty including TB, HIV and malaria, and possibly being sick of the palsy (Salendine Nook joke). I decided to use the justgiving site because if I die in the course of the ride (67 miles !) your donation will still get to LEPRA. I've only been cycling since last May - before that the last time I was on a bike, George Michael was straight, so this is quite a challenge for me. I'm looking forward to it though and with your help and my legs, we might be able to save some lives.

Leprosy is a chronic infectious disease of skin and nerves characterised by loss of sensation, disfiguring skin lesions and peripheral nerve damage. If left untreated it leads ultimately to disability, deformity and even blindness, and so has been feared and loathed since Biblical times. When nerves are damaged, the ability to feel pain is lost, so hands can be damaged without the person realising it and, because it doesn’t hurt, they do nothing to treat the wound or to protect themselves from further damage, so ulcers develop and infection sets in leading to loss of digits through gangrene and either amputation or natural re-absorption.

Leprosy is one of the most stigmatised diseases, and the fear and loathing which has always accompanied it can lead to someone affected by it being thrown out of their community, even by their own families, and forced to live a life of lonely isolation. Fear of the disease often prevents people from seeking treatment, even if they suspect they may have leprosy - just by admitting their illness they could lose everything.

Leprosy is spread by droplets from the nose and mouth, mainly by coughing and sneezing. To contract leprosy, a person needs prolonged contact with someone who is infected and has not yet been treated. This is most prominent in areas of poor hygiene, overcrowding and poor nutrition. For the foreseeable future some 600,000 will be diagnosed each year - one person every 50 seconds of every day.

Today leprosy is totally curable with multi-drug therapy, in most cases within 1 year. As an occupational therapist, my work involves assisting people to achieve their maximum function and independence and helping them to overcome disability. Leprosy is so disabling when left untreated. With your donations, LEPRA can help to prevent more people developing severe disability. It can cost as little as £21 to cure one person of leprosy.

09/03/08  Mark Constantine, big boss at Lush, has told me that he will double whatever I raise so every pound you give is worth £2. Thank you Mark.

23/06/08 Well, we did it! It was a hard slog at times - hilly, and the wind was against us all the way, but we did it all in eight and a half hours, including rest stops. I was so tired at the end of it I could have slept sitting on the bike, but it was worth it - people have been so generous with their sponsorship, we've raised so much money.

The page will stay open until mid-August, but I'd like to get it all sorted out before I go on holiday in late August, and obviously we need to get a final total sorted soon so that Lush can fulfil their very generous promise to match my total. So if you were thinking about donating but haven't done it yet, now would be the perfect time. If you work with someone or live with someone or share an internet space with someone who might like to donate, now would be the perfect time to suggest it.

Thank you very very very much, everyone who has donated money and/or offered support - I've been whelmed by the messages of support I've had. I've never done anything as major as this before, and your support has really helped - and I DO mean that most sincerely. ;-) Apart from anything else, it ensured I kept going through the tough bits to make sure I earned your money. I think by the time all the money comes in, between us and Lush's donation, dad and I will have raised enough to cure nearly 140 people of leprosy. That means they'll be cured and equally important, not able to infect anyone else. That's a wonderful achievement. Thank you so much.