Myself Grace Robson Simon Robson Jonny Walls Beth Horn Victoria Robson Rob Ramsden & Liam Snaith are running the Great North Run to raise funds for the Sick Children’s Trust. 

Elodie’s story

At our 20 week scan our daughter Elodie was diagnosed with a rare heart defect called Right Sided Aortic Arch with Aberrant Left Subclavian Artery. At 6 months old Elodie was then diagnosed with having a Vascular Ring. A Vascular Ring is a rare abnormality of the aorta meaning the aorta encircles and compresses the windpipe and oesophagus.

Elodie has undergone two heart surgeries to fix her Congenital Heart Defect at The Freeman Hospital in Newcastle. Living over an hour’s drive from the hospital we were so relieved to be supported by The Sick Children’s Trust. The Sick Children’s Trust supports families with a comfortable place to stay close to their seriously ill child’s bedside and we were given a room at Scott House which is located on the hospital site. All expenses of the ‘Home from Home’ are taken care of by the charity which completely rely on donations. As a family this took away so much stress and meant we were always just minutes away from Elodie.

Elodie underwent her second heart surgery at the Freeman hospital in July 2020 and we were so fortunate that The Sick Children’s Trust supported us again by giving us a place to stay at Scott House for a second time. For Elodie’s second operation we hoped her recovery to be as successful as her first surgery and prepared to be in hospital for a week. But after surgery, Elodie took a unexpected turn and developed extreme breathing difficulties. Her right lung had collapsed, and Drs diagnosed that Elodies heart had been compressing her airways, and as a result of this she was diagnosed with a severe airway condition called tracheobronchomalacia and left vocal chord palsy. We were devastated and had no idea what this meant for our daughter. The only option for Elodie at this point was to remain ventilated and rest. 

Elodie was closely monitored and remained on life support for 10 days, but unfortunately as the days passed Elodie showed no improvement. She was then transferred to Great North Children’s Hospital to undergo surgery for a tracheostomy, which saved her life. We felt like our lives had turned upside down. We were so appreciative that The Sick Children’s Trust continued to support us by providing us a place to stay again, this time at Crawford House. This was located just a minute’s walk from the ward that Elodie had been transferred to meaning we could still be close to her side.

After 2 months Elodie made great progress and was successfully weaned from ventilator support. She was discharged from hospital in September and returned home with a tracheostomy. During her whole time in hospital The Sick Children’s Trust supported us both by providing us with lovely facilities to sleep, shower, eat and wash our clothes all while being just a stone’s throw away from our daughter. This provided me and Simon everything we needed to be able to support and remain close to our Elodie whilst she was in hospital under the amazing care of our NHS.

The PICU is the section of the hospital that provides sick children with the highest level of medical care, so therefore it’s unsafe to accommodate parents to sleep by their child’s bedside. Without this charity we would have had to make a 80 mile trip each day to be by our daughters side. Being separated by a short walk was unbearable enough, so I can’t imagine the struggle it would have been to face the long drive home without her each day. This would have put so much more emotional, physical and financial stress on us, when we were already going through the horrendous pain of our daughter being in Intensive Care. We are so grateful to The Sick Children’s Trust a simple thank you would not cover the support they provided us.

We are therefore running The Great North Run to raise money to support the charity’s ‘Homes from Home’. Their goal is to keep families together through unbearable times.

We are kindly asking for donations to make this possible. Thank you so much.