A fit-as-a-fiddle Northumberland man saw his life turned upside down when he developed an extremely rare degenerative terminal illness - and now his four adult children are to take on the Great North Run to highlight his brutal illness.
Retired accountant Ernie McGeorge, 78, has Multiple System Atropy (MSA) - an illness which sees the brain slowly lose the ability to control the body. Its early symptoms can be mistaken for Parkinson's, while it is a related illness to Motor Neurone Disease.
Ernie - a former semi-professional footballer who would run regularly and even completed the Great North Run himself at the age of 63 - has been slowly becoming more and more unwell over the past few years. Wife Irene is now his full-time carer, while at Christmastime last year his family thought they might lose him as he suffered with pneumonia.
