kimberley clarke

I’m running the London Marathon 2027 to fight for lung health!

My amazing dad, Michael Clarke, passed away from COPD at Christmas last year, and my life hasn’t been the same since. I’m 28 years old, and for as long as I can remember, my dad struggled every single day just to breathe. Year after year, I watched his health slowly but relentlessly decline.

My dad worked as a care assistant and he loved his job. Sadly, in 2020 his health deteriorated to the point where he could no longer work. He physically couldn’t do the job anymore without becoming exhausted and needing frequent and long breaks just to catch his breath. Having to give up his career really impacted his mental health and i always remember this as the start of his decline. 

Every day I saw his breathing get worse. He struggled to cough up phlegm, suffered with panic attacks most mornings because he couldn’t breathe properly, and gradually lost his independence and freedom. 

Eventually, my dad stopped leaving the house on his own. He couldn’t walk far without becoming breathless, and the constant fear of not being able to breathe caused overwhelming anxiety. Everyday he would have to take a mixture of morphine, anxiety medication and rescue remedy just to get through the day. Trying to get him out the house in a wheelchair took hours, it would cause panic attacks and take a long time for him to recover and calm his breathing down again but I always persevered as I knew how miserable and trapped he felt inside all day. 

Over the final 2 years of his life his mobility declined even further. He could no longer move around the house and we had to bring his bed downstairs into the conservatory. In the end, my dad was confined to that one room. His COPD was so severe that he physically couldn’t walk anywhere else. He spent every day sitting in his chair, relying on countless inhalers and nebulisers just to breathe, until carers came each night to help us get him into bed. 

This became his life every single day, until he passed away from COPD on 19th December 2025. I personally witnessed how COPD destroyed my dad’s quality of life. For two years, he was confined to a single room, living in constant pain, anxiety, panic, breathlessness and depression. Watching him lose himself and his personality was heart breaking and really eye opening to see how underfunded support in our area for COPD is. I can’t get my dad back and I can’t change what happened to him, but I want to be able to do something meaningful in his memory. No one should ever have to suffer the way my dad did and I'm really passionate about the opportunity to raise money for Asthma and Lung UK and increase research and support resources for people living with COPD and other lung related illnesses.

Since my dad passed away, I've found grieving really hard but one thing that's helped me is running which is why I’ve chosen to fundraise for Asthma + Lung UK in the 2027 London Marathon  

Just £24 can support a researcher at the start of their career to carry out an hour of lung health research to ensure we attract and keep the best scientific minds to focus on lung disease.

Any support would be amazing in my fight for lung health!