Thanks for taking the time to visit our JustGiving page.

Alec and I are running the Bristol 10K on 9 May 2010 to raise money for the following:-

   Ward 32 at the Bristol Royal Hospital for Children and Cystic Fibrosis Unit at the BRI - our good friend Dion has Cystic Fibrosis.

As we are running for two different charities we have set up two different JustGiving pages.  So please donate equally to both our causes and visit Alec's JustGiving page also.

This is Tom our nephew he will be 6 this year.  Three weeks after Tom was born he stopped breathing and was rushed to the BRI.  Doctors discovered that Tom had three congenital heart defects.  These were MAPCAs (major aorto-pulmonary collateral arteries), in which the blood vessels linking his heart and his lungs were in the wrong place; pulmonary atresia, where the valuve that mixes the blood with oxygen was not working correctly, causing him to look blue; and ventricular septal defects, known as holes in the heart.

Tom has had major surgery five times in his short life and twelve lesser operations.

His first operation was in July 2005 when the arteries on one side of his heart were put right.  Three months later he had surgery to deal with the oxygen supply to his blood.  In 2007 the arteries on the other side were "replumbed" and the holes in his heart patched up.

There were various complications along the way.  Tom has had to be tube fed all his life, to ensure he puts on weight, and his speech has been slow to develop, although he can communicate using Makaton sign language.

As you can see Tom has spent a lot of time in hospital and all of this time was spent in Ward 32.

Donating through JustGiving is simple, fast and totally secure. Your details are safe with JustGiving – they’ll never sell them on or send unwanted emails. Once you donate, they’ll send your money directly to the charity and make sure Gift Aid is reclaimed on every eligible donation by a UK taxpayer. So it’s the most efficient way to donate - I raise more, whilst saving time and cutting costs for the charity.

So please dig deep and donate now.