I'm ditching the razor and taking part in Decembeard to raise money for Bowel Cancer UK. They're the UK's leading bowel cancer charity and are determined to save lives and improve the quality of life of everyone affected by bowel cancer. 

Bowel cancer is the UK's second biggest cancer killer with over 16,000 people dying annually of a disease that is preventable, treatable and curable.I'm determined to help Bowel Cancer UK to change that. The money you donate will help to provide support and information to patients and their families, enable them to fund and support research into bowel cancer and to campaign for early diagnosis and best treatment and care for all.

The disease has effected my family in a way that unfortunately won't heal. It caused my mum unimaginable pain, took her from us and broke our hearts. She first began to feel as though something was wrong earlier this year, and through fear didn't report her symptoms as early as she should have. Better knowledge of the disease and an awareness of the fact that its quite treatable if picked up on early enough may have changed this.  

Once we discovered that she was seriously poorly, the doctors operated on her to alleviate some of her problems however what followed was a period of around 5 months of indecision between consultants over the type of cancer she was suffering from, and by the time they had pinpointed its origin she was too unwell for them to provide her with chemo therapy. 

There were so many question marks over so much of her treatment and I truly believe she was let down. I hope that one day the money raised from initiatives such as this will mean that we can eradicate the pain and heartache caused by bowel cancer.