Sammie Roden

I would like to nominate my best friend Sammie Roden, She is an amazing woman who sadly had a stroke 6 years ago and then was diagnosed with APS, which means that she is on a blood thinnning medication for the rest of her life. More recently she has been diagnosed with Lupus and Fibromyalgia which causes her a great deal of pain in her joints and makes mobilising difficult at times. Despite all this and losing her career after the stroke Sammie set up her own card business, making special cards for Armed Forces families to give to soldiers, sailors and airmen when they deployed and also the very sad condolence cards for Armed Forces Personnel that were killed in action, and has just completed a two year college course to become a Sports Massage Therapist. She is always helping other people and at the moment is organising a fund raising day on the 2/7/11 for Help for Heroes. Sammie has coped with much of this on her own due to husband being in the Navy. She is never down, always happy and smiling and deserves to be a Torch Bearer as a very brave woman. I was diagnosed with APS (Antiphospholipid Syndrome) following multiple blood clots to my lungs before my mini stroke and not after as stated. My type of Lupus (as there are many) is ' Connective Tissue Lupus'