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In honour of SwimNE's 10th anniversary, we wanted to support a charity that is very close to our hearts. Theresa, who some of you may know from our Nemo team, has shared her story...

"My son was born a beautiful, happy baby and although my husband and myself were nervous with any movement he made as most new parents are, our world was complete.
The next year and a half was fantastic, our bundle of joy brought so much happiness to us (although with the sleepless nights I might have been tempted to disagree) and this new chapter of our life with Harvey was great.
One day I went to the doctors for a normal check up with him and spoke to the doctor regarding a small swelling down below on Harvey. The doctor put me at ease and said Harvey had a small hernia, but that this was very normal and a small operation was all that was needed.
A few weeks later we went to the hospital for his operation, nervous as anything but trying to stay calm for Harvey. As they did the usual checks they found a murmur when they listened to Harvey’s chest, but again put us at ease. Harvey’s operation went well and home we went and waited for the next appointment to arrive regarding his murmur.
A few weeks later the appointment came through and off we went to the hospital for the check-up; unfortunately we were then to discover that our boy had a hole in the heart. Our hearts sank. What did this mean? What would change for us and Harvey, and what was going to happen next for our beautiful boy? Would this change the plans we had for him? Everything you could think of was going through our heads.
Now our story is a good one. Harvey never needed treatment but needed to be monitored every year to check the hole had not grown any bigger. Harvey is now 12 years old and is a very healthy kid, plays football and is very active in his life. We know we are lucky, and throughout our visits year after year at the Freeman there are many other people's stories that have not turned out as well as ours. I can only imagine what those parents much be going through.
As for the Freeman hospital; I cannot speak more highly of them. They were all amazing, Harvey’s consultant was the calmest man I have ever met. There are no words great enough to say about the whole staff except they are truly brilliant. This is why I will do anything to support CHUF and the Freeman hospital, and we are proud to be raising money for them during our sponsored swim."

For our 10th anniversary our team and our fabulous adult swimmers will be teaming up to swim for 10 hours on Sunday the 30th October at our Sports Central venue. Meanwhile our wonderful Ben will be running 26.2 miles for the Morpeth to Newcastle Marathon. Together we are hoping to raise £1000.00 for CHUF. 

We are so grateful and proud of the support we have received from you all over the past 10 years; if you wanted to come and show your support once more you can come along to the pool to cheer us on, see Ben finish his final stretch on Newcastle's Quayside or donate to our cause through this page. 

Thank you,
From all of us at SwimNE and Nemo swimming!