We recently found out that our friends daughter, Verity, has been diagnosed with an extremely rare heart tumour known as Fibroma. She is just two years old. This tumour causes her heart to going into a life threatening heart arrhythmia known as ventricular tachycardia. This can cause Verity's heart to stop beating, meaning that her mum and dad must carry a defibrillator around with them at all times, as they never know when Verity's heart may stop beating.

This is an extremely desperate situation. There is nobody within the NHS who has the experience to carry out this operation. Nor will the NHS fund this operation to be carried out elsewhere. Instead, Verity's parents have been advised that they need to begin crowd funding, in order to raise the money to pay for the surgery.

There is an experienced team of surgeons at Boston Children's Hospital in America, who have confirmed that they can carry out the operation. This surgery has a 100% success rate and will mean that Verity will be able to carry on living a normal and happy life, post surgery. Whether this happens, is down to whether we are able to raise the money for the surgery, which is £100,000.

Through generous donations, Verity's parents have been able to raise a significant amount of money for this surgery. However there is still someway to go.

With this is mind I have decided to run the Reigate half marathon in September, in order to do my bit to help get Verity on that plane to Boston.
This will be a huge challenge for me, but it is nothing in comparison to what Verity and her parents are facing.

If you have children, I urge you to look at them and decide whether you would want someone to help them to survive if they were faced with the same awful situation. Every penny you donate will go towards saving Verity's life. Please donate, no matter how small a donation, As every penny really does make a difference.

Please help give Verity a chance at life,

Thank you