Journal of IiME Volume 8 Issue 1 May 2014 The world of ME has many hurdles for patients - one of the greatest being isolation. It is too infrequent an occurrence for friends, and sometimes even relatives of someone with ME to stay in contact, let alone actively do something to help. Many ME patients can feel isolated and abandoned by their friends and even family members due to the ignorance and effects of the disease. So Invest in ME were amazed at the reaction and spirit of a group of four friends who created a scheme to visit all 92 English Football League Stadiums in under 92 hours in support of Invest in ME and in order to raise money and awareness for the Rituximab Trial. They did this to help their friend who has ME. On 16th of April 2014, my wife, Cat, and two good mates; Mike and Raz started a six day challenge to drive to all 92 English Football League Grounds in under 92 travelling hours for Invest In ME. I wanted to do something to raise funds and awareness for ME sufferers as one of my best friends from school in Cornwall, Ian, has suffered from ME for over 7 years and been unable to work or lead a normal life. Throughout this period he has always amazed me with his positivity about one day recovering and he told me about the Rituximab trial and its success in Norway. From hearing about it and doing some research online it appears that the drug could represent a very real breakthrough for treating and hopefully curing the illness and I was determined to get involved and do as much as The event lasted six days in April 14. The charity and our supporters are indebted to this group of four who are did such an amazing job of raising awareness for ME. Football clubs, hotels, TV companies helped in building huge interest and this positive way of raising awareness and funds for ME has increased the exposure of the work the charity is trying to do. The blog of the event is here http://92in92.blogspot.co.uk and one can still make donations to support the amazing event The charity had a flag especially made for the tour and this was shown in photographs made at every football ground and used for photo opportunities at all of the clubs. we could to support bringing it to the UK. Ian and I have always talked for hours about football (him being a Liverpool fan, myself being a Man Utd fan) and once we’d come up with the idea to visit all 92 clubs it became really obvious that this could be a huge event in raising awareness. We began writing off to all of the clubs for support, football magazines, over 150 newspapers UK wide and various radio/TV to try and get as much attention as possible. In the end over 70 clubs pledged their support for the challenge which was pretty amazing and over 30 newspapers began calling me for info and agreeing to feature us. The challenge itself had been done by 3 other groups in the weeks running up to its start date so we found that a lot of the clubs were unable to support us with Invest in ME (Charity Nr. 1114035) www.investinme.org Page 18 of 52
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