Paulina Sainsbury

Bristol Children's Hospital page

Fundraising for Wallace & Gromit's Grand Appeal
£3,858
raised of £3,000 target
by 99 supporters
Donations cannot currently be made to this page
In memory of Olivia Sainsbury
We support Bristol Children's Hospital to save lives & support sick children

Story

Thank you for visiting my fundraising page for Olivia's Star Tribute Fund supporting the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) at the Bristol Children's Hospital. I set the fund up through the Wallace & Gromit Grand Appeal in memory of my daughter, Olivia, who died from Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy at the age of 14 weeks. 

We've spent 25 days at PICU where Olivia was fighting for her life. This is the whole story:

We arrived in Bristol Children's Hospital on 22nd February. Everything started after a bath when Olivia refused to eat, started to make grunting noises, was unresponsive, pale and floppy. Emergency ambulance took us to Gloucester A&E where we found out that Olivia had sepsis and her heart was enlarged. After doing various tests doctors decided to take her to adult Intensive Care while we were waiting for another ambulance to transport us to Bristol. As she was deteriorating she had to be intubated and given adrenaline injection. After that Bristol team arrived with cardiologist, who had to drain fluid from around Olivia's heart before transporting her to Bristol as it was causing too much pressure on her heart.

Once we arrived in Bristol we were looked after amazing doctors and nurses, who worked hard to try and save her life. They did crazy amount of tests but they weren't coming back with anything. The only thing they found was that she had CMV virus, which was an unlikely cause for the heart problem. After weeks of waiting, Olivia was slowly getting worse and treatment she was getting was not changing anything. She had to start getting more and more drugs to keep her stable and during last day it was too much.

But we're trying to look positive even in that bad situation. Our daughter died in our arms with no pain. And the whole family had enough time to say good bye to her. We've donated her kidneys to save someone else's life which makes her death a little bit less painful as we know that part of her still lives on. And obviously we want to raise as much money as we can for this hospital as we were truly taken care of. We had people to talk to and place to stay, which made it a bit easier.

So please donate as much as you can for this amazing charity!

Thank you very much for all your help xxxxx

About the charity

The Grand Appeal is the Bristol Children's Hospital Charity, transforming the lives of sick children from Bristol, the South West and beyond. Help save the lives of sick children, provide pioneering medical equipment and keep families together by donating or fundraising for The Grand Appeal.

Donation summary

Total raised
£3,857.30
+ £647.84 Gift Aid
Online donations
£3,732.30
Offline donations
£125.00

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