A year after being diagnosed with Cushing's Disease, a rare pituitary disease caused by a tumour, I have been told that not only was my brain surgery last June now deemed a complete success, but that my wonderful pituitary gland has woken up a little and started to pull its weight again. Go brain! At this rate there's a chance I might be 'normal' again, and despite there being a long way to go still I am celebrating, so please join me and my amazing husband and wonderful three children by raising a toast to "Sara's badass brain"!! and if you can spare a moment then please read on.

An additional way to celebrate would be to help me raise awareness and a few quid for The Pituitary Foundation. In a world of few answers when diagnosed with a rare disease, this charity is a lifeline providing power to those diagnosed by giving them knowledge, and has helped me personally enormously. I'm trying to pay back a little bit of the kindness now that has got me here. I started with a target of raising £200 and now I'm going big and trying to raise £1000.

Which brings me to a big whopping THANK-YOU to everybody who has supported me over the last year, and prior to that also when I was searching for a diagnosis and having a really tough time. I feel so overwhelmed by everybody's kindness and genuinely feel that nothing can knock me down when I have so much love around me. Sickening isn't it? haha! THANK-YOU all.

So now that I've convinced myself I'm invincible again (woo-hoo!), naturally the first thing I did was sign up to a 10K, a half Marathon, a hike up a mountain and a full marathon! Most of you know that the most I have been able to walk in the last year is about 2 miles at a time so these really are all HUGE challenges for me. I recently managed to run 500 metres and then had to sleep for 3 days to recover. This disease has taught me an important lesson though and that is that the journey is sometimes just as important as the end result and whether I complete them or not (I will!) I will give them my best shot and fingers crossed have helped make a difference to other peoples lives who are going through this, by raising awareness. 

Whilst I'm officially in remission for Cushing's Disease, the damage it's done to my body will take years to repair. The memory problems and constant pain is ongoing. My life has completely changed. I spend more time in my bed than out of it. During the brain surgery there were also a few complications and I now have an additional Pituitary disease (I promise I'm not collecting them!) called Diabetes Insipidus/ AVP-D which I'll never recover from so my reliance on the wonderful Pituitary Foundation for guidance is ongoing.

I can almost guarantee that most of you reading this page have supported me raising money for charities before, and I thank-you. As you probably know I'll also be abseiling off the roof of the QMC hospital at the end of March, a separate challenge I'm doing to pay for the A&E department's grant to better train their staff on patients like myself who experience an adrenal crisis. I was nearly a gonna and waited far too long for my emergency injection. 

This page is here in case any of you, like me, want to make a big difference but often don't know how. Please take a moment to click the link and see what amazing work the charity does. If you can then go one step further and donate some money - as the charity is really struggling at the moment (but please don't worry if you can't afford to. I completely understand). And if you simply don't want to do either of those things then please just use my wonderful news championing the awesome work of the NHS and my incredible brain (haha!) as an excuse to raise a glass - if you need an excuse that is! CHEERS EVERYBODY! Thank-you for reading this far.

*** Since writing the above some more amazing things have happened. Sometimes I'm not sure who inspires who.....