Team effort nets ex-player’s surgery costs

Sep 10 2010 by Denis Brown, Perthshire Advertiser Friday

A SPIRITED team effort has netted the £6000 a former semi-pro Perth footballer needs for what he hopes will be a life-changing operation.

The final leg of a fund-raising campaign by friends, family and teammates – a donkey derby last weekend – raised the sizeable sum required to pay for radical new surgery Iain Kerr hopes to undergo this year.

Another £3500 from a sponsored Isle of Skye to Bridge of Earn bike ride by his pals, Jim King, Duncan McPherson, Quentin Usher, Craig Christie, Brian Teven and Mark Irving, willsupplement ongoing medical costs.

As reported last month, the Bridge of Earn resident was only 25 and a promising mid-fielder with Bankfoot Juniors when struck down with a mysterious medical condition in 2001.

Bankfoot JFC chairman Robin ‘Woody’ Wood was MC at Saturday’s Tulloch Institute derby event, attended by more than 150 people, including many of Mr Kerr’s former teammates.

“I couldn’t believe the amount of people who turned up, it was just magnificent,” Mr Kerr said.

One top draw auction item, a Scotland top worn by Celtic legend Tommy Burns during his national debut in 1981, fetched a hefty £860, while a weekend spin in an Aston Martin car went for £350.

The first signs of symptoms that would ultimately force Mr Kerr to take early retirement from his roads technician job in 2009 emerged during a football game in 2001.

Diagnosis

But when the symptoms got more debilitating, a scan at PRI revealed lesions on his brain, leading to the former St Johnstone schoolboy player being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.

“Kerrso’s illness was a shock to everyone here, especially how quickly it unfolded,” said Woody.

However, now 35, Kerr believes he was misdiagnosed and that his illness was actually caused by the notoriously difficult to diagnose lyme disease, contracted by a tick bite in 1999.

Symptoms usually start with a rash, followed by a fever, fatigue, muscle aches, and headaches. A bite can also lead to more severe symptoms, such as facial palsy, chronic joint and heart problems.

“This disease caused my jugular vein to narrow and it’s so constricted that blood doesn’t flow through to my brain, which is why I have brain lesions or scarring,” he said.

After tests at the Essential Health Clinic in Glasgow, Kerr is among other ‘guinea pig’ patients scheduled to undergo an operation that has reportedly had positive results in the US and Europe.

“They’ll inject me in the groin and insert this little balloon that will be positioned on my jugular vein. Once expanded it will permit blood flow to my brain, and hopefully I will get better,” he said.

“I’m now registered blind, my balance is really bad,especially on my right-hand side, and I can no longer write.

“But I’m hoping the light is now at the end of the tunnel and my dream is that one day soon I’ll be able to kick a football again.”