I am running my first half marathon since giving birth in October in Manchester. I’ll be running my heart out aiming to beat my previous best time of 2:00:06 fuelled by love and pride for my Mum.

In January this year, she died suddenly from Cholangiocarcinoma (Bile Duct Cancer) thinking she just had gallstones. The symptoms are the same and so it can often get missed, but symptoms usually only show up in the very late stages of the disease when it is already too late to treat. Many doctors do not even recognise the signs of Cholangiocarcinoma, and even if they do happen to notice the signs, treatment options are limited at best by this point. Mum died not knowing she even had cancer. She fell unconscious on New Year’s Eve, never to wake up again. The day before, we had been doing crosswords together.

This is not a cancer we hear about. It is not one where you feel a lump, get checked out and then have a variety of treatment options. But it’s not as rare as you might imagine.

AMMF is the UK’s only Cholangiocarcinoma charity. They are fighting hard to raise awareness of this disease in the general public but also among doctors and nurses, so they know what to do if you or your loved one comes to them with symptoms such as breathlessness, dizziness, a pain in the upper right abdomen, nausea and sudden and unexplained changes to your stools.

Please help me to raise money for this charity so they can do this important work. You never think YOU are going to be in this position. We didn’t. Never dreamed of it. You think you’ll notice and then fight with everything you’ve got. But it’s not like that. If you can spare even £1, this all adds up. And if you can’t spare a pound, please find a fact about Cholangiocarcinoma and share it. Education and information are what will help save more lives at this stage. Please do what you can to help. The more we talk, the less taboo it all becomes and the more we learn about what to do if and when we find ourselves in this situation.