Great Manchester Run 2023

Team Westhoughton does the Great Manchester Run 2023!

I am running the Great Manchester Run on 21st May 2023 to raise money for our new charity Holly's Hearts. I will be doing this with a team of my work colleagues from Westhoughton High School and we want to raise as much money as possible for the charity. The run is a half marathon - 13.1 miles which I have already started training for. Some of my colleagues are doing the 10km and some the half marathon.

The charity gives children with cancer gifts and/or experiences to help them through their cancer treatment and to create heartwarming memories with their families. The charity was set up by me and my husband after losing our daughter Holly to cancer on 8th April 2022. Here is a little bit about Holly's story:

Holly was always small in size compared to other children her age and eventually through genetic sequencing she was diagnosed with an extremely rare condition called Bloom Syndrome in March 2020. One of the complications of this condition is that it put her at a very high risk of developing cancer and usually at a younger age than the general population. Just 3 months later a tumour was found in kidney and it was a high risk Wilm’s tumour.

After undergoing surgery and 7 months of chemotherapy Holly had clear scans and rang the end of treatment bell in June 2021. Unfortunately she relapsed in September 2021 having more surgery and daily proton beam therapy. Again it was thought the new treatment had worked but a routine check up in December 2021 showed that she relapsed again this time to the lungs and there were multiple tumours. She and the family never gave up hope and she started chemo over the Christmas period. After having an initial response to this new treatment it then changed and the disease progressed. She became very poorly in March and fought right until the end. She passed away on 8th April 2022.

We were left with money that our friends and family had fundraised for Holly to beat the disease but that was not to be. We wanted to do something with the funds to help other children going through what Holly went through. That's when we created Holly's Hearts. The charity name and logo was created in late 2022 and we started to give out our first gifts in December 2022. The charity have given out Center Parcs breaks, panto tickets, theatre tickets, toys, technology, trainers, lego the list goes on. We hope that we are making Holly proud by putting smiles on the faces of other children going through cancer treatment and ensuring her legacy lives on. Details of our story can be found on our Holly's Hearts facebook, instagram and twitter pages as well as our website hollyshearts.co.uk.

Please support me and my friends for this Great Manchester Run.