Chris O’Neill completes epic trike challenge

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Chris completes epic trike challenge | Gazette & Herald Gazette & Herald

A MAN who has twice undergone brain surgery has cycled more than 200 miles to raise vital funds for a national charity supporting other sufferers.

Chris O’Neill, 62, has completed the Challenge of cycling along the Hebridean Way on a specially-adapted trike. His achievement is all the more impressive given he has had brain surgery twice in the past five years.

Father of three Chris, an architect from Sheriff Hutton, was accompanied by his wife Lesley, 62, and four close friends for his epic challenge. They covered around 40 miles a day over five days, cycling from the southern tip to the far north of the archipelago.

Chris has raised £3,740 to date to be shared between The National Brain Appeal, who raise vital funds for the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, in Queen Square, London where he was a patient, and PAUL For Brain Recovery, who provide support for people affected by acquired brain injury in Hull and the surrounding areas.

Following an episode in 2016 where Chris experienced double Vision and became unsteady, it was discovered that Chris had a cavernoma, a cluster of abnormal blood vessels, on his brain stem, and it was bleeding.

In early 2017, when steroid treatment failed to get the bleeding under control, Pedro Oliveira Castanho, then a consultant neurosurgeon at Hull and East Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust, operated on Chris with a live link to neurosurgeons at The National Hospital for their advice during the complex surgery.

Chris’s wife Lesley said: “It was such a ...

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