Hello and thank you for visiting my fundraising page.

 

On 17^th April this year I will be taking part in the London Marathon.  This is not only a physical challenge for me but an opportunity to raise funds for a charity very close to my heart, the Cystic Fibrosis Trust. 

 

As many of you will know my wife Emma suffers from Cystic Fibrosis (CF).  CF is one of the UK's most common life-threatening inherited diseases which affects the internal organs, especially the lungs and digestive system, by clogging them with thick sticky mucus making it hard to breathe and digest food.  It is a debilitating disease which affects over 8,000 children and young adults in the UK.  Each week, five babies are born with CF and two young lives are lost.

 

Emma takes up to 50 pills a day and has to carry out an intense twice daily routine of physiotherapy and nebulised antibiotics.  She also undergoes regular courses of intravenous antibiotics to control the persistent infection in her lungs. However, despite all this, in 2004 Emma was the first known girl with CF in the UK to complete a marathon, raising over £17,000 for the CF Trust.  This was an enormous achievement and with this in mind I thought it was about time I put myself to the test through the streets of London and followed in her footsteps. 

 

The Cystic Fibrosis Trust is the UK's only national charity dedicated to every aspect of CF and they fund ALL the vital medical and scientific research needed to treat and cure CF.  A cure, in the form of ‘Gene Therapy’, has been something Emma has been hoping for since she first heard talk of a ‘breakthrough’ on the radio whilst on the way to school aged 8.  Sadly these things do not happen overnight and the time and money involved seem never ending.  But 22 years on the charity have made phenomenal progress and cure is genuinely just a few years away. 

 

However, all this vital research is funded entirely by people like me, who choose to embark on challenges or organise events solely to help raise funds for the Cystic Fibrosis Trust and the work they do.   So on that note I hope that you be able to support my marathon challenge knowing that you are contributing to research that will very soon be saving the lives of these young and courageous people. 

 

With many thanks

 

Andrew