As many of you will know, me, my brother (Matthew) and sister (Claire) lost our lovely dad to bowel cancer earlier this year. Whilst his fight was extremely strong, courageous and admirable it was, to some degree, in vain as the cancer quickly spread, dad's prognosis becoming terminal less than 16 weeks after the discovery of the tumour on Christmas Eve. As soon as dad knew that this horrible disease was to take his life, he expressed the wish to spend his final days and pass away in Barnsley Hospice where "The neighbours can't nosey." Thankfully, this wish was granted.

Dad was in Barnsley Hospice less than 24 hours, but during that short time it was obvious what a truly amazing job all the wonderful nurses and staff-team do - day in, day out, 24 hours a day - to provide their patients with the best possible pain-free quality of life they deserve. "We are a charity - our care is free for patients but not free to provide." It costs over £9,000 a day to run the hospice - after NHS funding, that's a shortfall of over £2m the hospice needs to raise every year to stay open. If dad's care had not been free, could we have found the funds to enable him to pass away in the place where he wanted to be? I'd like to say yes, of course we could and would have. But without knowing what those costs would be, who knows. Thank goodness for our dad - and millions of other people's dads, mums, aunts, uncles... - that care IS free, but to ensure it stays this way and the hospice are able to continue granting such important wishes, they desperately need additional funds.

I'm running my first ever 'official' run on 27th September to raise funds for the hospice - The Great Yorkshire Run. It's not a marathon, or even a half marathon - it's a 10k - but I'm by no means an expert at this and I can guarantee you it will bloody hurt! Please, please, PLEASE help me to help the hospice in a tiny way and give something back for all they did for dad, and all they do for hundreds of local Barnsley people and their families every year.

Every single penny counts! Thank you in advance for any donations xxx

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