**** UPDATE: Race successfully completed in just over an hour! 5km round lovely Regent's Park, in warm sunshine at a leisurely pace, with pauses for photos + a boiled egg for sustenance. Lucy and Jordan walked alongside me, and my sisters met me at the finish line. No stick was used, and I reckon I added an extra 2km walking to and from the bus stop! Feeling a little tired now (6pm), but my back is fine. 

You can still sponsor me if you haven't yet! Help me reach that target... :-) ****

In January 2010 (as some of you know, and some of you don't) I was diagnosed with a rare condition called solitary plasmacytoma, i.e. cancer, which had eaten away one vertebra of my spine.

As a result, this time last year, for a period of about six months, I was virtually unable to walk. On a good day I could get to the end of the road and back, slowly, on crutches. On a bad day I couldn't sit unsupported and had difficulty crawling up and down the stairs.

One year on, thanks to the amazing doctors and nurses at St George's Hospital in Tooting, the Royal Marsden in Sutton, some excellent complementary therapists, and the help and support of many wonderful friends, I am back to something like normal. Not only can I walk again, I can do things I didn't expect to be able to do again, like jog to catch the bus, swim 1km, even (carefully) dance! The orthopaedic surgeons recently decided that I don't, after all, need a second operation and have discharged me. The cancer is now in remission, i.e. there's been no trace of it since the end of radiotherapy 12 months ago.

I've been building up the distances I'm able to walk, and I think the furthest I've managed so far is about 3.5km with stick. So I've challenged myself to walk the whole 5km of the Race for Life unaided (the stick, and a friend, will be on hand, just in case!)

I very much hope you'll show your support by sponsoring me via this page (please don't forget to GiftAid it) - perhaps also by coming to say hello and cheer me on on the day.

Like many of us, I once (some 30 years ago) lost someone very dear to me to cancer, and it shocked me profoundly. I found the word 'cancer' terrifying. It's only really now that I'm discovering that cancer doesn't have to be a death sentence. It's something millions of people can, and do, LIVE with - often for decades. I believe it's vital we overcome our fear of it, in ourselves and in others, that we demystify it and learn to address it calmly and openly, as an illness like any other.

As the recent 'Times' supplement put it: cancer is a way of life for so many people that we need to try and think of it in a different way. The new reality of cancer is that it is not a disease to be conquered, but a normal part of life that needs to be managed and adjustments made.

Currently, two million people in the UK are living with cancer, a number set to double by 2030 as diagnoses are made earlier and treatments improve. Two in every five of those diagnosed with the disease are of working age. Statistically, during our lifetimes one in three of us will be directly affected.

Money raised from the Race for Life events goes to Cancer Research UK. Thanks to organisations like this, treatments for cancer are improving dramatically. They're constantly being refined, with the result that, while there may as yet be no 'cure', many cancers can effectively be eliminated, periods of remission extended, life expectancy dramatically prolonged, and quality of life improved, while treatments are being made less unpleasant, less invasive, and more specific.

In doing this I am of course also thinking of all my friends and acquaintances who've had to deal with cancer, most of whom, I'm happy to say, are doing very well. I've put all their initials on my 'back sign' for the race (see photo 2).

Thank you very much for your support. Please give as generously as you are able!

Charlotte