My name is Joshua Hodgkinson and I celebrated my 21 birthday on the 4 December 2013. I live in Lindley, Huddersfield and currently work at Huddersfield Royal Infirmary in the medical records department.

With your help I aim to raise money and awareness for the British Heart Foundation.

In November 2012I suffered from chest pains and I thought this was nothing more than indigestion. Being a typical lad I thought I could sleep it off so I took myself to bed. During the day the chest pains got worse and I had difficulty breathing and felt very ill and naeuseas . I found this extremely scary as I didn’t know what was happening. I contacted my family who rushed me to Huddersfield A&E department where I had ECG and blood tests. They quickly gave me a diagnosis and administered   medication which eased the pain and as a result my breathing soon became normal. It wasn’t until the next day when I went for a check up that the enormity of what had happened to me sunk in. The doctor explained that I had suffered from a condition from Pericarditis, where the pericardium , a fluid sack around the heart had become inflamed  causing my lack of breath and irregular heart beat. I thought things like this only happened to old people, not young healthy 20 year olds.

 

After several weeks of feeling unwell I started to recover and began to feel like my old self again. The whole episode really scared me and made me realise that heart conditions can affect anybody, no matter what age they are. 

I have decided to raise money and just as importantly raise awareness for the British Heart Foundation. I am challenging myself to climb Mount Kilimanjaro , which is the highest peak in Africa. Providing I do not suffer from altitude sickness, it will take 10 days to complete this hard and gruelling trek,  and will no doubt test my mind and body to its limit.

To follow my training  exploits and to get up to date information on my challenge you can follow me on twitter @joshs_climb and also on face book ‘ josh’s mountain challenge’.

 Thank for taking the time to read about my fund raising challenge. I do so hope you can help me with donations, no matter how small , and I will try my very best to make all my sponsors and family proud of me.