Patients treated for Dialysis in Morocco only receive 50% of the necessary treatment

Via book sales we provide funding for the full treatment of Dialysis including blood/urine tests and medication post treatment. Increasing Dialysis patients chances of survival and saving lives.

Tobi Tarquin

Dialysis patient helping others who are less fortunate.

I knew how fortunate I was to get the full suite of dialysis, blood and urine tests each month and all the necessary medications, updated monthly according to the test results, at no upfront cost to me.

In Morocco, the basic dialysis is free of charge but, without the regular blood tests and the regularly altered cocktail of medicines, it doesn’t work properly, and the patient soon deteriorates. In consequence, many perfectly sustainable patients die a slow and very painful death just for the sake of £100 per month.

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To Fight My Own Battles Tobi Tarquin Book Cover

To Fight My Own Battles

Tim Croy is an average thirteen-year-old boy with a dark secret in his recent past. Join Tim as he starts at a mid-ranking Public School in 1975 and follow him and his peers as they wade through the confusion of unfamiliar rules regulations and traditions of an ancient school during the slow moving first few days.

As the boys settle in the pace quickens and Tim experiences the horrors of fagging, constant bullying, and the gradual understanding that he is destined never to fit in with the expectations of the school. Feel the pride and excitement of totally unexpected sporting success and weep as Tim suffers serious physical abuse which comes close to making Tim end it all. Take pride in Tim as he fights back and see the gentle kindness which develops between Tim and some senior boys. Laugh out loud as the maturing Tim begins to take control of his situation with subversive and subtle challenges and disruptions to the self-satisfied routines of the school.

Share the fun that Tim and his two close friends begin to derive from observing the ways of the school from the viewpoint of questioning teenagers and cry with Tim as he faces the shock of tragedy befalling his closest friend. To Fight My Own Battles looks closely at the accepted standards of the period and their long-lasting effects on those who were subjected to them.

Had Tim been at school in modern times he would have been considered to be depressed, possibly traumatized but in the 1970’s it was simply expected that a boy should take all such things in his stride, and it was accepted that this was a part of the transition from boyhood to manhood.

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Free to Grow Tobi Tarquin Book Cover

Free To
Grow

Free to Grow is the sequel to “To Fight My Own Battles”, in which we share Tim Croys’ experiences and adventures in the freedom of Hull University in the early 1980’s.

Enjoy the regular contrasts with his life in Hull and his memories of life in his restrictive boarding school, laugh as his naturally high spirits and enquiring mind are, at last, given free reign and share his pain as he and some close friends share their first adult experience of sudden tragedy. The story is packed with period historic detail and gives an insight into the ways in which the rapidly changing face of Britain at the time affected the perceptions of a whole generation.

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Free To Fall Tobi Tarquin Book Cover

Free To Fall

Free to Fall is the story of Usman Albad, a young man from Saudi Arabia who comes to study in England, in search of adventure and a better set of opportunities.

The reader is transported between the life of a student at an English university in the early 1980’s and his sun-soaked life in Jeddah. The contrasting cultures and the questions that Usman has to resolve about exactly who he is and who he wants to become present us with amusing and thought- provoking insights into how English culture and customs are perceived through the eyes of somebody from a totally different background. Usman finds himself increasingly isolated from those he loves most as the story reaches its’ heart stopping climax.

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Convoy to Change Tobi Tarquin Book Cover

Convoy To Change

Convoy to Change is an autobiographical snapshot of a few months in 1993, during which the author spent his time fundraising, collecting donations of food and medical supplies and driving, each month, to deliver them to refugees in the war-torn former Yugoslavia.

Join Dave and his friends, old and new, as they get drawn ever deeper into the developing crisis and find themselves motivated to push boundaries and take increasing personal risks to help people for whom each feels growing responsibility.

Based upon recent European history, the story looks at the fragility of all societies and the potential danger of contemporary demands for regional self-determination and autonomy. The reader is confronted, repeatedly, with the uncomfortable question: “Could that happen to me?”

Heart stopping incidents combined with heart-warming acts of kindness are expertly interwoven with the regular lives of our protagonists, creating the feeling of reading about personal friends rather than a historical novel.

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What is Dialysis?

Dialysis is a procedure to remove waste products and excess fluid from the blood when the kidneys stop working properly. It often involves diverting blood to a machine to be cleaned.

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How It All Began

How my life changed and this became my new ‘normal’.

I was a successful Headmaster, leading a group of international schools. I thoroughly enjoyed my work, and I knew I was good at it. To achieve stability for my young children, I commuted from our home in England on a weekly basis, which was the best compromise for our family situation at the time.

Moroccan-Dialysis-Charity-Logo

During the course of one week, close to the start of the Spring term, I began to feel unexpectedly tired. I returned home for the weekend and found that I had none of my usual energy to enjoy life with my wife and children. I assumed I’d been pushing myself too hard.

I returned to work but, on Tuesday, I woke up to find my whole body felt kind of heavy. I went to work as usual. On Wednesday I woke up looking like an elephant! I could hardly walk. Something was wrong. I got a taxi to the local hospital and presented myself at A&E. I was seen immediately, which made me think that it wasn’t good news.

The doctor didn’t speak much English and my Italian was little better. I understood that they were going to admit me, to undergo some procedure. I didn’t understand the term “Nephris”. I found myself having local anaesthetic, a tube inserted below my neck and then being attached to a big blue machine with lots of wires and dials on it. I was alone and afraid.

Eventually I was able to understand that this was a dialysis machine and that my kidneys had failed, suddenly, without warning and totally. Dialysis was to become my normal, four hours, thrice weekly, for the long term. I wouldn’t be able to work, or certainly not overseas, so I had to resign my dream job. I returned to my home and family, ill, shocked, and facing an uncertain future.

As I began to settle into the rhythm of my new life, empty days, sometimes feeling OK, often feeling generally unwell, three, four-hour long sessions of dialysis in the local hospital each week, I started to crave something positive that I could still do. I needed to feel less useless, to have some semblance of purpose in my life again.

My wife suggested that I should write some of the stories about my school days, with which I often entertained our children, and other adults, with much resultant laughter. This seemed like a harmless enough activity, so I started taking my laptop with me to dialysis and to spend most of the time typing away busily. This was fine, so long as I typed only with my right hand. Using my left hand disturbed the tubes that connected me to the machine and would set off a peel of alarm bells, bringing nurses running. Very embarrassing!

Soon I began to think that these random writings of memories of school could be turned into a passable book. This motivated me further, aiming at a target of sixty to eighty thousand words.

By chance, my wife was talking to her mother in Morocco, who had been having dialysis for the previous few years. She talked about the many people there who were too poor to be able to afford the blood tests and medication which are an essential adjunct to successful dialysis. In Morocco, the basic dialysis is free of charge but, without the regular blood tests and the regularly altered cocktail of medicines, it doesn’t work properly, and the patient soon deteriorates. In consequence, many perfectly sustainable patients die a slow and very painful death just for the sake of £100 per month.

This was how the concept of a charity, funded by the sale of books, was conceived. I knew how fortunate I was to get the full suite of dialysis, blood and urine tests each month and all the necessary medications, updated monthly according to the test results, at no upfront cost to me.

I’d been involved in charitable work before, spending two years as an aid worker in the Balkan war of the early 1990’s. I knew how rewarding it is and now I saw that I had an opportunity to do something similar. I had the time, and I was certain that I could write some good books. This was the foundation of a long-term, self-financing charity that would save lives. All I needed was help in marketing and publicising my books, once I’d completed writing them.

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Want to help? If you would like to support the cause then please get in touch today and get involved.

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Adult Lives

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It’s never easy moving from a lifetime of education into the adult world of work, but when events conspire to make you do so in the middle of the worst recession in living memory, it can feel more like an assault course than a gentle transition process.

Join Tim Croy and his friends as they find themselves ejected from the comfort of student life into a harsher environment of thwarted hopes and hostile realities.
An historical novel, based in the early 1980’s and packed with period detail and personal experiences, joined expertly and humorously by the irrepressible energy and optimism of youth.

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If you would like to support our cause, then please donate today via our Paypal link. 100% of the proceeds go towards the cost of the treatment for dialysis for moroccans.

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Available, get them online today!

Discover our different books on the Amazon store! Available digitally too.

Order now!

Available, get them online today!

Discover our different books on the Amazon store! Availble digitally too.

ORDER NOW!