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I will be taking on the challenge of a 5 day long sponsored silence from the 31st August to the 4th September.

My Gran Olive was given the terrible news that she has Motor Neurone Disease on the 13th May 2021. It is a life shortening condition and there is currently no cure.

As a progressive disease that affects the motor neurones that control your muscles, MND can have a devastating impact on basic functions such as walking, talking, eating, drinking and breathing. One of the cruelest and first things that the disease stole from my Gran was her voice. My Gran has always been a great communicator, working as a teacher and becoming deputy head of the local primary school. However, as her condition has progressed my (now retired) Gran has been forced to adapt, communicating via different avenues without being able to talk like she always used to. 

Despite the fact that I will never fully understand the difficulties my Gran and many MND sufferers face living life without speech, I hope that going 5 days silent will give me a better insight into their struggle whilst also raising awareness of the impact on individuals of losing their voice due to MND. Since my Gran’s diagnosis she has taken to using apps on her phone/ipad to text which then translate her text into speech. So, in the same way in which my Gran uses these apps to communicate, I will be trying these out during my 5 days of silence. As a student who has just finished A levels and is on summer holiday hoping to go to university in late September, I think it will be interesting to document the challenges that I will face speechless and I thus plan to keep a daily log on here which you can look back on to see how I get on. 

As most of my friends and family know I can talk for England so this is going to be a tough challenge for me!

Any donations would be really appreciated and I hope will help provide MND sufferers like my Gran with continued support in the future whilst also funding valuable research.

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