The Bravery of Tom Buckley

3 years ago I had a phone call from my tearful and nervous mother, my little sister Sarah had been diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukaemia, aged 18. After a fourth demand, a local GP had finally agreed to give my sister a blood test to try and explain her lethargy. A day later she was admitted to the Christie Hospital Young Oncology Unit as an inpatient, she would end up staying there for six months. This aggressive cancer of the blood had ridden my sister of her immune system and loomed ominously over her life. Having lost our Grandfather to Cancer just months before we were nervous about the prognosis. My sister, it seems, is a fighter (she obviously learned a lot from her brother) and she responded very well to her treatment with an attitude that would make Lance Armstrong proud. Today she is well on the road to recovery has become such an infamous street artist that she competes with Banksy. My sisters story however, is not the one I intend to tell today.

During that time at the Young Oncology Unit at the Christie Hospital in Manchester, we became involved with the people there. We ran fundraising campaigns and became friends with the nurses who cared so well for my sister. My sister established lasting friendships with the other young people on the ward, all members of families undergoing the turmoil that comes with addressing the mortality of a loved one, particularly at a young age. One such individual was a young man by the name of Tom Buckley. After four years of treatment, countless operations and a great deal of hope, he has this month been told that he has less than a year to live. So with one false knee and a declining level of health he has decided to complete the most difficult task he could think of and will walk from one coast of the UK to the other next month. All proceeds going to the Young Oncology Unit that has cared for him.


If you want to support Tom Buckley in achieveing his goal, go to:- http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.justgiving.com%2Fthebuckers&h=17fd8244b725e74945b655e27cc6b291