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Just to let everyone know, my time was 2 hrs 17m, not too bad for a first attempt (and carrying a slight calf injury).
My personal highlight was watching Kris Akabusi geeing everyone on by doing that fist pumping the air thing he does, magic!
Thank you all for your donations, I have been overwhelmed by your generosity.
Thanks again,
Nick
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Hello,
On the 5th October I shall be running in the BUPA Great North Run – my first half marathon. I shall be running to raise money for The British Heart Foundation. The main reason I chose this charity is for the following reason…..
In August last year (2007) my sister gave birth to a little girl called Hannah. For the first couple of weeks she seemed to be fine, but then over a very short period she started displaying worrying symptoms. Long story short, she was rushed to hospital and even had to be resuscitated a couple of times in the ambulance.
It turns out Hannah was born with an extremely rare heart condition called Pulmonary Atresia with Ventricular Septal Defect (Hole in the Heart), an additional complexity of her condition is tiny pulmonary arteries. 1 in 145 babies have a heart condition, of which less than 5% are down to Pulmonary atresia, so with the small arteries as well it makes her condition extremely rare. You can work out the stats!
This basically means there is no Pulmonary valve between her heart and lungs so there is no way the blood can be oxygenated, Hannah currently has a ‘Shunt’ which supplies blood from the Aorta to the pulmonary arteries to enable her blood to be oxygenated.
After this operation to put the ‘shunt’ in, Hannah was put on a machine called Ecmo which oxygenated her blood externally (see picture). This machine is used very rarely.
It was very touch and go for a bit, her parents even had her christened at the hospital, but, she is now doing well. She will need more operations in the future but we are hopeful as she’s now that much bigger and stronger, she’ll handle them as well as she’s handled everything so far.
So this really is my motivation to raise money for the British Heart Foundation, to help other babies (and adults) like Hannah. So please sponsor me, every little helps!