As some of you know I have a vascular malformation tumour on shoulder and arm.

A VM is a benign tumor or noncancerous growth of the blood vessels.

I've already had 7 operations at Great Ormond Street but the aptly named 'Lumpy' doesn't seem to getting message that we want him him to stop spreading! I've now been transferred to The Royal Free Hospital for further surgery, in fact I'm there this week for an MRI scan and discussions with my consultant to the next course of action.

VM are pretty rare, less than 1% of the worldwide population.

I want to raise awareness of VM's in hope that more research can become available to help sufferers like me, so with that said I've decided to run a half marathon on 6th October this year for The Butterfly AVM 🦋 Charity- The first AVM specific charity in the UK.

Statement from the charity -

"Together we can make a change, build awareness, support and raise funds for much needed research into the understanding of facial, extremity and brain AVMs. Due to the rarity of AVMs in the population and lack of funding, the advancements required to enable doctors and surgeons to increase the success rate of treatments has been slow. Our Charity was created with a dream to redress this by providing directional funding to Research institutions in the hope that definitive treatments are discovered"