Help Ellis get to Disneyland

Ellis’s story

At the beginning of the year my work colleague and her family received the devastating news that her 4 year old grandson Ellis was diagnosed Burketts lymphoma leukaemia, and was admitted to Bristol hospital to start his lengthy treatment of chemo.

Ellis still has a long way to go and is still undergoing treatment but is fighting with all he has every step of the way whilst having to cope with being away from his siblings, and his mum and dad whilst they do alternate weeks up the hospital with him and look after the other children at home .

Our housekeeping team at Crowne Plaza Plymouth, who Julie his nan and myself work for decided to raise money for Ellis as this little fighters dream is to go to Disneyland to meet his favourite superhero the hulk. We organised a Easter prize draw in work and raised over £300 this is fantastic but still not enough to get Ellis to meet the hulk. So we needed to think of another fundraiser and this is where my story begins.

All my life I have been terrified of the water and never learnt to swim because of it, so I decided that if Ellis could face this terrible illness then I myself should face my own fear and learn to swim to raise money for him. So at the end of April this year I took the plunge and dipped my toes for the very first time, and with the help and time of my friend Lisa she has taught me to swim. With that fear conquered my next fear is to sea swim as my challenge i have set myself to raise money for Ellis is to swim 200 meters in the sea. I set myself 6 months to achieve this in and I am already half way there, the sea training begun a few weeks ago (boy it’s scary out there). I am definitely out of my comfort zone of a pool now.

For those of you who know Plymouth my swim will be on The Hoe from Tinside beach (next to the Lido) out to the yellow bouy and back again. That’s a lot of water underneath me.

I am aiming to do my swim for Ellis in September I don’t have a date as of yet, due to me not being a very strong swimmer so the weather and sea conditions need to be right for my safety. Once I have set a date and time for the swim anyone is more than welcome to come along and support me in my madness. Please help me raise as much as I can for Ellis.