PAULA KERR AND PADRAIC NAUGHTON

THE nurses from Roscommon have three sons — Archie, 11, and sevenyear-old twins Isaac and George, who have Duchenne muscular dystrophy, a catastrophic muscle-wasting disease.

ARCHIE is absolutely sports mad but because of the disease he can’t really participate in sports other than going to his football club and rugby club as a supporter. A personal trainer in Roscommon called Sinead Gannon came up with the idea of him doing the Dublin City Marathon. She put us in touch with a charity called Team Kerr, who donated a running buggy to our trust, Join Our Boys Trust.

This is a story of hope and of inclusion in sports of people with disability. Life for my husband and I is incredibly difficult, I won’t pretend otherwise. We’re in a constant state of grief. At the same time we have little boys who depend on us.

You are given a choice of how to cope and we wanted to do everything we could to support research into DMD, which is why we set up the trust. To date we have raised €950,000.

Archie is so excited about the marathon. He’s got plans to have his hair orange like our T-shirts. When you’re in a desperate situation yourself, you find ways of doing things you never would have done otherwise. We’ve been training really hard since the beginning of May. If you hear that someone has collapsed it will be me!