Helping Laura Green and her family

In November of this year Andrew Hancock and I will be attempting to run from Broadwater cricket club to Horwich RMI cricket club 250miles plus in 10 days. We came up with this ambitious (some would say crazy) idea one evening after a few beers and naturally we have to see it through now. Whilst we have both run marathons before this will be rather different as the next day we will have to get up and run another and follow this process for 10 days in total.  This will be a gruelling experience (mainly sharing a room with Andrew for 9 nights) and training has already begun in earnest to ensure we give it our best shot.

 

Why are we doing this?

 

2 years ago Laura Green was diagnosed with an extremely rare and large Tarlov Cyst (Meningeal Diverticulum). The cyst was sitting on the whole of Laura’s tailbone and immediate surgery was performed at a specialist hospital to extract the cyst from inside the spinal canal. Unfortunately, the cyst has caused irreversible damage to her spine, nerves, bladder, bowel and she has difficulty walking. Despite this operation it seems that something is still not right and no one has any answers.

 

Each day,  Laura has to take a cocktail of strong painkillers and various drugs to manage the acute pain. With frequent hospital visits and many overnight stays, she is finding it difficult to be a full time mum to her two children 4 and 6. They have only ever known their mummy to be “poorly” and find it very difficult to deal with the uncertainty of her health day by day. It isn’t getting any better for Laura and in fact it is getting worse with no positive cure or treatment available.

 

It has also had a great impact on her husband Chris who has had to play the role of husband, mum, dad and carer all at the same time. I have seen at first hand both the emotional and physical impact it has had on their family and how it is affecting everyone including brother, sisters and parents/grandparents.

 

Hope:

 

For the past 2 years they have been desperately researching, networking and reaching out to various doctors around the world in a bid to help find answers and some hope. Recently they have made contact with Dr Forest Tennant who is based in California. Dr Tennant is a leading consultant in the field of pain management. Dr Tennant has offered some hope to Laura and Chris in that having reviewed her MRI scans from afar he is confident that if he is able to see Laura he can diagnose the issue and offer support in his treatment protocols.

 

Raising funds:

 

Chris and Laura are both proud people and haven’t asked for any help from anyone, despite living through some very bad times these past couple of years. Yet every route they have been down has led to no answers as no one here in the UK knows what is causing this pain. I have grown very frustrated seeing their struggles and want to do something to help them. When we found out that there may be a glimmer of hope Andrew and I decided that we needed to do something to help them and get Laura to see Dr Tennant. It is more than likely that Laura will either need to undergo treatment (£10,000’s) and/or stay in California for ongoing support.

We want to ask for your kind support and generosity to help them on their journey by sponsoring us on our quest to run 10 marathons in 10 days.

 In conjunction with helping Laura and her family we have discovered an incredible local charity making a huge difference to those who have been diagnosed with cancer. Cancer United are also supporting us for the event by providing us with a minibus and helping raise awareness of this campaign and for Laura's condition. We want to provide a % of any donations made to Cancer United. To find out more about the charity and what they do please see here https://www.cancerunited.org.uk/



 Thanks so much in advance.