My brother Dave is ill. He has been unwell since he was 19, he’s now 44. There is no tablet, no treatment that can make him better but your sponsorship may.

Dave has Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME) and the cause of the illness remains unknown despite there being a quarter of a million suffers in the UK (and up to 17 million worldwide). The illness has a devastating impact on the sufferers and their families, but despite this, there is very little government funding into discovering it’s cause and treatment.

This year I will be completing the London Marathon on behalf of the charity CureME. Based at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, CureME has a simple mission: to understand ME through driving clinical & biomedical research for recognition, diagnosis and treatment. They receive no UK government funding and rely upon charity funders and the generosity of their backers to fund their research. (https://cureme.lshtm.ac.uk/)

For those of you not familiar with ME, it is a fluctuating neurological illness and it's effects are quite frankly life altering. You only have a limited amount of energy. My brother says the easiest way to describe it is like having one bar of battery left. If you use up any more battery you will crash and feel like you are going down with a bad dose of flu, a really bad hangover or overwhelming exhaustion. But that description doesn’t even scratch the surface of symptoms that range from muscular and joint pain, migraines, total sleep disturbance, nervous system problems including dizziness, hypersensitivity to light and sound, loss of balance, inability to concentrate, follow conversations, memory loss, speech
and language difficulties, digestive issues including severe nausea and as a consequence associated mental health problems such as depression. The list is extensive and I haven’t covered half of it here!

For people with ME the simple act of getting up, making something to eat or drink, walking upstairs to bed, leaving the house to meet friends or family and engage in a conversation when feeling so unwell takes more effort than you and I can ever comprehend. Frankly put, Dave and other ME sufferers can’t run a marathon. For them getting through every day is a marathon in itself.

So why am I putting myself through the early morning gym sessions, endless training runs in the cold, rain, hail, snow and ice, not to mention running the 26.2 miles on the day? Well Dave and I were having a conversation one day and I flippantly said I’ve always wanted to run the London Marathon. It was then that Dave confessed that it had always been one of his ambitions growing up too.

So on the 28^th of April, I’m going to be running this marathon for my brother. He is my motivation and every mile I cover will be for him. Along the way I also hope to raise some money and awareness for this largely unknown condition and charity.

So now that I’ve tugged at your heartstrings I’m hoping that I can pull on your purse strings too! All I ask is that you please spare a penny, a pound or whatever you can to sponsor me and help to fund this vital research.

With many thanks

Jen

*Please note that every penny raised will go to directly to CureME via the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine*