An Onchan woman will take her place on the starting line of April’s Manchester Marathon, driven not by a pursuit for personal glory but by the long, exhausting nights spent watching over a child in crisis.

Diagnosed in late 2022 at only four years old, her daughter Rosie’s relentless, drug-resistant epilepsy - an illness capable of unleashing up to 30 seizures a night - has turned endurance into a daily reality for the family.

Now, as Samantha Crowe prepares to run the marathon on April 19, she’s channelling that resilience into a fundraising mission for the Alder Hey Hospital in Liverpool, which has stood by her family through this tough time.

No combination of medications has been able to fully control the seizures. For the mother from Onchan, watching her daughter struggle through endless tests, sleepless nights, and trial after trial of treatment has been heart-breaking. But it has also given her a reason to run.

Drug-resistant epilepsy is a condition diagnosed when an individual fails to become (and stay) seizure free after adequate trialling of two antiseizure medications.

Samantha cast her mind back to when Rosie first began to experience her symptoms: ‘We kind of noticed a couple of things at night time prior to last December, but nothing was really obvious. It was like she was having a nightmare in her sleep, there was little bits of shaking and stuff like that. But it didn't feel more.

‘Then, one morning, she woke up and she had lost all her left side, basically, she could walk, but she was limping on her left leg. She couldn't pick anything up with the left arm, and her coordination had completely gone on the left side.

‘We took her straight to hospital where she unfortunately had a seizure.

‘We were in hospital for about three weeks including Christmas and New Year’s Day.

‘Rosie was in Noble’s for two weeks, and then Alder Hey for one week, and she was having about 30 seizures a night.’

Since then Samantha has praised both Alder Hey Hospital but also the local treatment she has received on island from health care professionals.

‘The doctor over here is amazing. She's really, really good to us. She talks with Alder Hey about Rosie and, yeah, we don't tend to go over there much because we don't really need to. It's something we've kind of learnt to live with at home.’

Each time Samantha has taken Rosie to Alder Hey, she’s been struck by the little details made possible through fundraising - the cheerful face painting in reception, the tiny sparks of joy offered to children who need it most.

Those moments left her feeling both helpless in her daughter’s struggle and deeply inspired. She realised she wanted to give back, to help ease the journey for the families who would come after her. It was then she decided to run April’s marathon despite having previously said she would never do one having found a half-marathon really tough in the past.