"Imagine your head feels as though it's been crushed by a vice, a headache unlike anything you've ever felt before, where every part of your head hurts and the pressure is unbearable, and it's a pain no-one can see. Imagine a world in permanent soft focus, where things come in twos, where things disappear momentarily, where you can't tell how deep a step is, where bright light is a pain you can't stand.

Imagine a world that sways around you, where you feel as though you're in the middle of a storm on a cross channel ferry, feeling dizzy and sick - yet you're standing still. Imagine you're so totally exhausted that your body doesn't want to move and all you want to do is sleep, yet an incessant roaring in your ears keeps you awake. Imagine feeling lost and fearful, confused in a place you used to know well.

Welcome to the world of IIH!"

Hi, Hodge here, thanks for stopping by.

Let me start by saying this: I hate running. Hate it. I've been doing it regularly since March, and yet my thought process each time I do it goes something like this:

Start: "Yay! Run time!" 1st 20 seconds: "This is great!" Every step from then on: "I HATE THIS! I WANT TO STOP! WHY AM I DOING THIS!!!????"

And that is a very good question. It started out simply as a way to get a little fitter for 5-a-side football and keep myself in some semblance of good shape. But it it became a way to practice pushing myself when I want to give in, which as I mentioned, is all... the... time! When I do want to stop running, one of the things that keeps me going is thinking about people for whom being faced with a gentle slope at the end of a 5k run wouldn't be a challenge, it would be an impossibility. And in my life, that means my older sister, Zoe.

For the last 7 years, Zoe has suffered from Ideopathic Intracranial Hypertension, essentially a huge excess of pressure on the brain, which started as a series of extremely painful headaches, but has developed into a life altering affliction that makes every day a struggle. The constant headaches are excruciating. Zoe cannot lie in one position long enough to sleep at night, she cannot exercise, even walking any distance is a struggle. Having been a successful pub landlady and manager, she is now unable to work. And worst of all, the pressure has now largely destroyed her sight, and she is registered blind, being unable to see more than a couple of feet in front of her face. 

Now, while there are some advantages to Zoe's situation (she doesn't sleep at night, so cleans the house for my parents and does the ironing; and when she does sleep it is at random times, and often in embarrassing places, of which - as her brother - I am duty bound to make fun), this illness has effectively destroyed the life she had hoped to have, and at the same time it has completely altered my parents' lives as they reach retirement age.

So how can I - and by I, I mean you - help? In case you didn't know, Ideopathic means 'of unknown cause'. So, for sufferers, one of the greatest challenges is finding out what it is, and how they should go about living with it. They have to find the right doctors and hospitals that know how to treat it, and the help and support of those who know what they're going through is invaluable in this process.

IIH UK seek to provide a network of support for sufferers. They are distributing IIH patient information leaflets and posters into hospitals, GP surgeries, opticians, anywhere that will have them, to enable more IIH sufferers to access the information and support they provide. They continue to support people via  online support forums and hold annual ‘Weekenders’ giving people the opportunity to meet other people suffering with IIH.

Their efforts have really helped Zoe as she tries to cope with life with IIH, and you can read more about them at www.IIH.org.uk. I will be running the Great Birmingham Run in October for them (that's 13.1 miles, with me having never run so much as a mile before March!!!), and I'd be really grateful if you could sponsor me, if only so that when I hit the infamous mile 11 hill I keep hearing about, I'll have your sponsorship as motivation to keep going, as well as the little voice in the back of my head that says: 'Come on you big baby! Your sister would give anything to be out here running up hills, this is the absolute least you can do!'

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