Thanks for taking the time to visit my JustGiving page.

My little brother Ewan died on the 24th April 2005 aged 23 years old. He was diagnosed with Schizophrenia at 19 years old. As a family, this was never a barrier and Ewan’s challenges and strengths were openly celebrated….usually with wit, dry humour and sarcasm! Ewan was incredibly intelligent and articulate and could discuss and explain his schizophrenia to anyone who was interested. He was a gentle, beautiful and kind soul, loved his family and friends, was incredibly talented creatively with being a self taught guitarist, song writer, script writer, poet and actor. He saw the good in everyone he met, would do anything for anyone, sometimes to his detriment as he was also innocently naive.

4 days before the died, he was found at his supported living apartment by his community psychiatric nurse very confused with a cut lip and a black eye, unable to communicate what had happened. He was taken to hospital, his lip was dressed and he was then transferred to the psychiatric ward after displaying ‘hallucinations’. Once on the ward, the next day a nurse who knew him recognised he wasn’t behaving in his usual way when going through a relapse and called on a medical doctor. After tests were run, it was found that Ewan’s kidneys were failing, the next day he started showing signs of respiratory distress, I travelled from London where I lived to Cheshire the following day with my best friend to see him in hospital whereby I was told he would be in a normal ward by the next day despite blood results showing he had over x1000 times more than the normal levels of creatinine in his body, usually caused my major trauma like being hit by a bus. Ewan was displaying a confused state of mind and couldn’t tell me how he cut his lip or received a black eye.

I caught my train back to London later that day and as I was approaching Euston station, my older sister phoned me to tell me Ewan had passed away after having a number of fits and was unable to be brought back to life. I firmly believe that Ewan’s physical symptoms were mistaken for a mental ‘relapse’ and actions were not taken soon enough to address his body going into organ failure. He was sedated after his first fit.

A post mortem identified that Ewan died of Pneumonia and kidney failure but at his inquest is was concluded as an open verdict as there were no proven reasons as to what caused his body to go through total organ failure. As there were no medical staff or experts at the inquest who had actually met Ewan, there was no opportunity to ask specific questions. Without concrete evidence it appears his medication may have been the possible cause as it lowered white blood cells, meaning Ewan needed 2 weekly blood tests to check his white blood cells count before his next dose was prescribed. As a relatively new drug, the side effects were not known. The shock and devastation has been unimaginable.

Ewan volunteered for Mind and presented a business plan to the council to get funding to set up a charitable activity organisation for people living with mental illness to get them out and about. He named the organisation ‘Mind Games’ with the first proposed activity to be walking the Sandstone trail. He died before this became a reality.

In honour of 20 years since his passing I will be walking the entire 34 miles in 1 day to raise money for Mind.

Please share this with friends and family and the wider world so I can raise as much money to support people and their families living with mental illness.

Thank you 🙏🏽