In January of this year, our special Mum - Claire - was diagnosed with a brain tumour - a large glioblastoma. We sat together in a small hospital room in Birmingham, the whole family, and waited for the doctors to tell us wha the plan was. There wasn’t one. No operation, no treatment, nothing to try. Just a number: two months.

I don’t think I’ll ever forget that silence & shock. We left the room and they led us into a family room, and we all just collapsed. Disbelief, fear, utter devastation. Our world as we knew it was over. Mum was the most determined, funny, stubborn woman I have ever known. She had a way of laughing at adversity, and here was something she wasn’t even allowed to fight. That’s the part that still takes my breath away. We weren’t told it would be hard. We were told it was over.

In the months after the diagnosis, the strangest holding pattern, our whole family dropped everything to share every last moment with the centre of world - Mum. I told her about my engagement, and that she was going to have a granddaughter. We cried, we hugged, and sometimes we just sat together. She couldn’t fight this disease in hospital, but she fought it with her huge smile. That smile kept us all going right to the end and we miss it every single day. Not having her there when our daughter arrived has been more painful than I could ever have imagined.

I used to scroll past pages like this one. I think most of us do. These things happen to other families. Until one day you’re the other family.

So my brother CJ and I are running the 2027 London Marathon for Mum, and for The Brain Tumour Charity. Brain tumours kill more children and adults under 40 than any other cancer. Yet for nearly twenty years, they received just 1% of the UK’s cancer research funding.

We’re running so that one day, when a family sits in that small room, the doctors have something to offer them. Please give whatever you can. It might be your family one day. I truly hope it never is.

With love and thanks,

Dan & CJ x