I've taken the plunge and decided to sign up for my first ever full marathon in May 2014! I'm raising money for the Liverpool Heart and Chest Hospital Appeal to thank them for giving me and my family back our Dad.

As many people reading this will know, my Dad unexpectedly suffered a major heart attack and went into cardiac arrest on the morning of Sunday 9th June 2013. His heart stopped for over an hour and he was on critical life support for almost a week. Thankfully, due to a combination of the extraordinary life-saving actions of my amazing Mum, assistance from a brave worker at Eastham Rake station (Kev Waring), the astounding work of the paramedic team, the determined perseverance of the doctors and nurses at Arrowe Park Hospital, and the immediate coronary intervention and on-going care from Liverpool Heart and Chest Hospital, my Dad is still here today. He not only survived against the odds, but he is now living a full and normal life! In fact as I write this he is gleefully watching Liverpool beat United 1-0!

I am raising money for the Liverpool Heart and Chest Hospital (LHCH) Appeal to thank them for saving my Dad’s life. There were so many amazing people who helped us over those awful couple of weeks but I want to say a special thanks to LHCH. My Mum, sister, brother (via a rushed flight home from Kuala Lumpur!) and fiancé spent hours and hours in the family waiting area at LHCH waiting for news about my Dad. The rollercoaster of emotions experienced in those four little rooms encapsulate all that it is to be human, and I want to raise money for their appeal to not only help patients care, but to support the families who can only wait, watch and wish for their loved one’s recovery. It may not seem much to an outsider, but those rooms were a sanctuary during that time, and it is as critical as any medical procedure that the families left in the wake of such crises can have access to facilities like these; something which the LHCH appeal supports.

 

So I am asking you to sponsor me to run a marathon. I am running it in support of the patients, families and staff at LHCH who are all amazing in their own special ways. I am running it to raise money for an appeal which saves lives and sustains hope. I am running it because I want to say thank you for the support both me and my family received. But, perhaps most importantly, I am running it for love.