Imagine hearing the worst possible news as a parent - that your child is seriously ill and not expected to live to be an adult.

Claire House helps parents create wonderful experiences for their children and bring back a sense of normality to family life. By providing specialist nursing care and emotional support, Claire House helps families smile again when life couldn’t get any tougher.

Your money can make a real difference to a family who urgently need more support.

This challenge is very personal to me and as soon as I heard about it, I HAD TO SIGN UP!

The challenge itself involves three days of hiking across the beautiful Icelandic wilderness in the hopes of catching the elusive Aurora Borealis, whilst traversing mountains, geothermal valleys and volcanic ash fields in very unpredictable weather conditions. This might sound like a bit of a holiday, but for me it will be a serious challenge, as I'm not as strong as I once was.

In 2012 my wife and I welcomed our second daughter, Eva into the world and our lives changed forever. Eva was born with a genetic disorder that has limited her development and even after countless tests and investigations has never received a diagnosis. She requires 24-hour care and at the age of 10 is still unable to speak or walk and has a feeding tube for the majority of her food and drink. To say that the last ten years have been tough would be a massive understatement and I cannot imagine how our family could have made it without the support of a wonderful charity like Claire House.

Over the years, Claire House respite breaks have allowed myself, my wife and eldest daughter to have a few nights away without worrying about Eva's day-to-day care and these brief reminders of normality have been invaluable.

Thanks to Claire House, in November 2017 my wife and I were able to book a short break to Iceland for some very rare holiday time whilst Eva was well-looked after by Claire House. We managed to visit the Blue Lagoon, complete the Golden Circle tour and attempted to catch the Northern Lights, but unfortunately the didn't show themselves whilst we were there. The trip was amazing and like so many others I felt an immediate connection with the country, but couldn't fully enjoy the experience, as I was feeling unwell. I had been experiencing headaches, sinus pain and mouth ulcers for a few weeks leading up to the trip, but powered through and tried to extract as much enjoyment from the experience as I could.

When we returned home my condition became worse and a few weeks later I received my diagnosis.

It was cancer.

I was diagnosed with a rare and very aggressive form of stage 3 non-Hodgkin's lymphoma called Natural Killer T-cell lymphoma, that had formed in my sinus cavity and began to spread through my mouth, jaw and right eye.

What followed in 2018 was a year of gruelling treatment including chemotherapy, high-dose radiotherapy to my face and torso and eventually a Stem cell transplant to prevent the cancer from returning in the future.

Obviously, I had to take time off work from my job as a police officer, but due to our situation with Eva, my wife also had to take time off from her job as a nurse, as she was now basically a lone parent with a severely disabled 5 year-old to care for. This is when Claire House really stepped up and became more than a helping hand and more like part of our family.

Throughout the course of my entire treatment, Claire House offered seemingly unlimited respite care for Eva, so that my wife could visit me in hospital, look after me at home and still be a brilliant mother to our eldest daughter without the added pressure of Eva's daily care.

I can never thank them enough and can confidently say that they played a huge part in my full recovery.

I have since returned to work on reduced duties and Claire House continue to support our family as Eva continues to grow and offer us new challenges.

I know that the charity has faced many challenges over the last few years due to the pandemic, which has reduced fundraising opportunities and placed additional restrictions on the care they can offer to their extremely high-risk children for whom they offer invaluable care.

The least that I can do to repay them is to try and raise as much money as I can so that they can continue to support families like ours, as well as end of life care for children and their families when the worst happens.

I am doing this for me, for Eva, for Claire and for Gabe.

Thank you for your support.

Dan

***FURTHER UPDATE***

Claire House are helping us again with emergency respite, as my wife Wendy has been diagnosed with breast cancer. This charity never ceases to amaze me!