In May 2014 whilst spending time in Durban South Africa, I was diagnosed with an aggressive stage 4b Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma. Suffering cachexia and kidney failure I went to the very edge of life and death. Through a miraculous journey of personal healing combined with medical science, I became and stayed cancer free.

On 1st June 2014 I watched the Comrades Ultra Marathon, a race billed as the 'ultimate human race' from my sick bed in Durban. The next day I was in a wheelchair at Durban airport travelling back to the UK for emergency medical treatment surrounded by hundreds of athletes all wearing their medals, looking super fit, excited and with that amazing sense of achievement having run 89kms in the hot African sun.

In that fateful moment I could not have been further away from where they were. Little more than a skeleton with skin, end stage with cachexia, my face gaunt, drawn and discoloured, cancer absolutely ravaging me, I made a promise to myself, the universe, God, humanity that one day I will return and run the Comrades Ultra Marathon.

Nine years later, the time to honour that vow has finally come.

I was an in-patient at Addington Hospital when my kidneys failed, they didn't have the right kind of dialysis machine to kick start my Kidneys but luckily I got transferred to a private hospital where I received dialysis, steroids and emergency intensive treatment to stabilise me enough for the trip back to London to start chemo.

On 11th June 2023, I will be on that starting line, raising money for a dialysis machine and equipment for Addington hospital in Durban where I so nearly died.