Men to complete 70-mile ultra-marathon along Hadrian’s Wall

Army pilot Dan Margerison-Gellender, 33, and his friend Chris Braithwaite hope to raise £ 5,000 by completing the 56-mile walk from Carlisle to Newcastle in July.

The money raised will be split between the Great North Children’s Hospital and Oscar’s to thank the charities for their continued support in helping them with Dan's daughter Immie, who was diagnosed with brain damage when she was one year old and currently lives with two brain tumours, severe epilepsy and Cerebral Palsy. 

Dan, who lives in Heddon-on-the-wall with his wife Megan, 30, believes that living so close to the wall was a great opportunity for the local challenge.

Dan, Megan and Immie (Image: Megan Margerison-Gellender)

Megan said:"Immie was born two weeks into the first Covid lockdown in April 2020.

"I expressed concerns at three and 10 days old over the phone to the health visitor that Immie’s right hand was in a fist and was tight shut.

"We were passed back and forth between health visitor and GP for a year, not being able to see either one before I refused to leave the GP until Immie was examined.

"Immie was immediately referred to Ipswich Hospital and seen the same week.

"Cerebral palsy was suspected, but the MRI scan that was conducted showed that Immie had a brain condition called Polymicrogyria, meaning the left side of her brain is smaller than the right and the folds on the outside of her brain aren’t as they should be. The condition is linked with epilepsy, autism and learning difficulties amongst others.

"We moved back to Newcastle in November 2021 to provide a stable location for Immie’s medical care and education, to be near family for support and to be close to the Great North Children’s Hospital.

"In December of that year, Immie had her first seizure, and her second a few weeks later, both resulting in hospital stays and a diagnosis of Epilepsy.

"In June 2022, Immie had a severe tonic-clinic seizure which the doctors were unable to stop. After five different medications and four hours in the seizure, the decision was made to put her into an induced coma, put on a ventilator and transferred to the Paediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU).

"The medical staff suspected that Immie had Meningitis, which brought on the seizure, and so Immie was taken for an MRI before a lumber puncture, which would extract fluid from her spine to check for the infection. The lumber puncture found a Pneumococcal infection from the meningitis family, needing 10 days of IV antibiotics; however, the MRI also found an unrelated brain tumour.

"After the course of antibiotics was finished, Immie had emergency surgery to remove the tumour which was found to be an Atypical Grade 2 Meningioma, rarely found in children.

"After surgery, the MRI to check the tumour was fully removed found another potential tumour. She recovered incredibly well, woke up in PICU singing ‘Wind The Bobbin Up’.

"Immie then had an MRI three months later, in October 2022, to check the growth of the tumours and found that the tumour which had been removed appeared to be growing back.

"Immie has MRI scans every few months which are currently showing both tumours to be stable, this is as positive as we can hope for and pray it continues.

"Her life involves roughly three seizures a week, 3.6 hospital appointments a month, nine medications a day and the constant worry of more seizures requiring time in hospital.

"Despite all she has dealt with and continues to deal with, she exceeds all expectations, is the happiest girl, and her family will do anything possible to keep it that way."