Running for Bex

Many of you will have known my darling best friend, Bex. Bex suffered with a rare but aggressive form of bowel cancer called BRAF – the same one that bowelbabe had - and Bex tragically died nearly a year ago, leaving behind her husband Al and three young children.

Her sister Anna did a lot of research during Bex’s illness and she runs the patient support group ‘Breaking BRAF’ http://www.breakingbraf.org/ Bex was also involved with the group, receiving and giving support to others in her situation. So I’m going to be raising money for them.

They’re a constituted community group (a charity was too onerous on everyone’s time as they are all dealing with terminal illness) and they are raising funds to run education courses for NHS Oncology staff about BRAF. BRAF is fairly rare and only affects 4,000 people a year in the UK, so very often local hospital cancer staff don’t know enough – or even anything - about it. Breaking BRAF are also going to publish a patient information leaflet for newly diagnosed patients, distributed by NHS Oncology departments. Until they launched their website last year, patients like Bex were left with no explanation and no support – just Google. That’s a situation that has thankfully now changed. They also work alongside charities such as Cancer Research and Bowelbabe Fund to campaign on key matters.

Help me help Breaking BRAF to help so many others like Bex, who are often young and facing a terminal illness.

And give them a follow on insta @breakingbrafuk