The President of Conquistando Escalones pilgrims to give voice to the medical research of Limb-girdle Muscular Dystrophy 1F and HIV
With the help of our partners and our environment, friends, family, stores and companies around us, we continue to hold events and raise funds for the medical research of Limb-girdle Muscular Dystrophy 1F that we suffer and at the same time, the door to a possible cure for HIV, since the genetic mutation that causes us muscular and degenerative disease, immunizes us against the virus. We have already managed to pay € 150,000 to researchers working to get it, but it is not enough. Even with the support of the municipalities where our board members reside, but left apart by large institutions and without funds or subsidies, and also contributing with a 21% to the state for every payment to medical institutions, we are helpless and desperate to secure the necessary funds so that the investigations do not stop. Currently, in the short term, € 200,000 before the end of 2018. For this reason, we use whatever means we can to achieve it and disseminate it and our president, Antonio Marín Sandoval, today set out to carry out the Camino de la Cruz in Murcia to give voice and visibility to our disease. This is the emotive text he wrote before his departure:
“I have traveled 637 km, making the last stretches of the Santiago’s pilgrim way, specifically on 3 occasions the Primitivo Road and on one occasion each, the Portuguese, French and English roads. This for someone normal, without any problem or handicap, call it as you want, is nothing special, but for someone like me with LGMD1f Limb-girdle Muscular Dystrophy, it can be an odyssey, getting to the point of having to literally crawl in my walks, through my dear Galician land. Having so close to home a Pilgrimage Way, as it is the Camino de la Cruz, I have thought of doing this too, and tomorrow my journey begins at the so-called Camino del Apóstol. Specifically, the Way that I begin starts in Cartagena, in the port the tri-millennial port, in the neighborhood of Santa Lucía, where the story tells that the Apostle Santiago landed in the Iberian Peninsula on his pilgrimage and evangelization for these lands. This road will take me to Caravaca de la Cruz, to the Sanctuary where the relic containing a Lignum Crucis is stored. I will travel the 156 km, which separate both cities, in 5 or 6 days, according to my legs. With this pilgrimage I look for several things, the pleasure of walking, I do not know if I will stop doing it and also try to give some more visibility to the Conquistando Escalones Association, of which I am a member and through which we seek a cure for our illness, to do just that, not to stop walking and for those who stopped, to feel the pleasure of walking again, something as insignificant as walking, for those who suffer LGMD1f Limb-girdle Muscular Dystrophy, it is a pleasure to do so. If with my daring to make this journey of 156 km walking, I can draw the attention of only one person who contributes on something to Conquistando Escalones, I will be satisfied, since my main purpose is to seek visibility to the Association to which I belong, and even knowing that those who work in this visibility every day, do it magnificently well, my purpose is to add a bit more to this cause. Surely I will drag myself again and I will fall on more than one occasion, but if all goes well, in a few days my goal will be achieved. I will tell you my pilgrimage through the Apostle’s Way. “ALWAYS FORWARD, CONQUISTANDO ESCALONES””.