Yorkshire 3 Peaks Challenge ✅ & Yorkshire Marathon

On the 13th March 2024 will be 4 years since Adèlle passed away. To mark this occasion I want to try to raise £2000 for CVSAUK by attempting to complete 2 challenges. The first being the Yorkshire 3 peaks challenge in 12 hours. This will mean completing a 24.5 mile hike including 3 mountains - Pen-y-ghent, Ingleborough and Whernside. The second will be running a half marathon.

EDIT: I have decided to run a full marathon aswell. This will be the Yorkshire marathon in October.

CVSAUK is a wonderful charity who I have had the pleasure of raising money for in the past when I climbed Snowdon for the first time back in September 2020.

Cyclical vomiting syndrome is a very debilitating, extremely painful, rare and poorly understood condition that needs as much help as possible for better resources and research to be able to help those who suffer from it.

My story

Adèlle was diagnosed with CVS at 12 years old I believe. We became a couple in November 2014. She was having regular episodes at this time but wouldn't see me when they were bad and I knew very little about CVS at the time and didn't really understand why. After a year or so her episodes pretty much stopped altogether (apart from vomiting after a large meal now and then) for a good 2 years or so. During this time we had an amazing life together. We completely redesigned and furnished her flat, went on countless weekends away, dinner dates, theme parks and holidays abroad. She managed to complete her Higher national level diploma in media make up with a distinction and even did plenty of work with celebrities and at high level events such as London fashion week. I'd actually pretty much forgotten she had CVS. Then on the last day of our holiday in Rhodes in September 2017 she became very sick. We missed our flight and had to get emergency accommodation from our travel insurance for another week until she was well enough to fly. As bad as this was we kind of brushed it off as a one off episode and didn't let it ruin an otherwise perfect holiday. She had quite a few more episodes after this and it became clear the CVS was back. I did all the research I possibly could and working with her GP and even a private specialist in London we tried absolutely everything but nothing worked what so ever. We went to Paris for her birthday in January 2018 and booked dinner in the Eiffel Tower. She was not well for this trip at all. We managed a couple of hours at Disney land but apart from that she was in bed in agony the whole time. Needless to say we had to cancel the dinner at the Eiffel Tower. This was devastating for her. The next 2/3 years were hellish for Adelle. Her episodes were relentless and very frequent. She made every effort to go to night classes at college and live her life as best as she could between episodes but it was really draining her emotionally, mentally and physically. She became incredibly weak towards the end of her life. The hospital couldn't/wasn't doing anything to help. Or the bare minimum at least. I came home on the evening of the 12th March 2020 and found her lifeless on the sofa. She was pronounced dead from vomit aspiration in the early hours of Friday 13th March 2020.

After Adèlle passed away I didn't know what to do with myself and was very lost. 2 of my oldest friends Allan and Emma pulled me up and introduced me to mountain hiking. I had never done anything like this before so I was a very anxious about whether I could do it or not but it was great being outside in the wilderness and gave me a massive sense of achievement. We decided to climb Mount Snowdon for CVSAUK charity and managed to raise over £700.

A little more about CVS

CVS has been recognised for over 100 years, but we still know relatively little about the cause of the problem. There is increasing evidence that mitochondrial DNA mutations play a role in some people developing CVS.

CVS is characterised by recurrent, prolonged attacks of severe vomiting, nausea and lethargy, with no apparent cause. Vomiting persists at frequent intervals, 5-6 times per hour at the peak, for periods ranging from hours to 10 days or more, It most commonly lasts for between 1 and 4 days.

The episodes are self-limiting and tend to be similar to each other in symptoms and duration. The sufferer is generally in good health between

episodes. There are no diagnostic clinical or laboratory tests for CVS itself, but when all specific conditions that could cause the symptoms have been eliminated by testing, doctors may classify the illness as Cyclical Vomiting Syndrome. This means that people with CVS may show a range of symptoms. One goal of the CVSA is to help develop better diagnostic criteria, so that sufferers are diagnosed more quickly and accurately than has been the case previously.