Being diagnosed with a rare blood cancer can be daunting .. I wasn’t expecting it to say the least but it made sense of many niggles (and some major events!) over the last few years.

As I've been recently diagnosed I thought I'd do something proactive and here we are .. I'm taking part in Ypres 100km over 3 days in May and would appreciate any sponsorship or support you can offer (if you want to join me for a walk in the interim, I'd be delighted to have the company)

MPNs are rare cancers (affecting less than 3 in every 100,000 people) that strike at the bone marrow, destabilising the body's mechanism for controlling blood cell levels. The diseases can rocket blood cell counts up or push counts down to extremely low levels causing debilitating fatigue, blood clots, heart attacks, strokes and dramatically increase the risk of leukaemia. Experts are stumped as to what causes MPN's but many people have a mutant JAK2 gene. Researchers in the field hope to understand more about the mechanisms behind this disease so that they offer people with MPNs better treatment and ultimately a cure.

Whether or not you feel able to make a donation, please can I urge you to consider registering as a Stem Cell Donor. This is extremely easy to do and involves simply posting saliva sample to the registration sites (https://www.anthonynolan.org/ if you are under 30yrs old or https://dkms.org.uk/en for those up to 55yrs). Donating stem cells is most often entirely straight forward and as easy as donating blood - doing so can save lives, so please do consider it!

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.