Please help us raise £5000 for 5000 miles for the Neuro-surgery dept. at RMCH.

Saturday 25th April, the day our lives were flipped upside down. It was a sunny afternoon and my 2 daughters were playing in the paddling pool in the back garden. My 3-year-old was going to hide and ran into the house before I could stop her. She slipped and banged her head on the kitchen floor. Within minutes she had become unresponsive and vomiting uncontrollably. My mum rang 999 and the paramedics arrived quickly. They took 1 look at her and knew something was wrong and wasted no time putting her in the ambulance and blue lighting us to Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital. Her oxygen levels were dangerously low and had to be intubated straight away. She was taken for a CT scan which revealed a very large bleed on her brain. Unbeknown to me, theatre was already prepped for her and soon later 2 amazing surgeons began emergency brain surgery and saved her life.

She spent 2 days in PICU kept under sedation and was then stepped down onto ward 78. After a week in hospital, we were finally discharged, and she is home recovering better than expected.

Myself and my family and friends could not thank the NHS staff for the care we received. I was not allowed to leave the hospital due to the pandemic and we weren’t allowed visitors, but not once did we feel like we were alone.

From the 999 call to discharge, the staff were amazing. I would love to personally thank every person involved in my daughters care but unfortunately, Saturday afternoon was a blur and I have no idea of their names apart from the surgeons: Mr John Kitchen and Mr Tom Grundy. Their names will be etched in my heart forever.

Both me and my mum work within the NHS and you don’t realise just how amazing the service is until you’re on the patient side.

So, please help me and 5 family and friends help raise £5000 for the Neurosurgery dept at RMCH. We will be cycling and running a total of 5000 miles and will share updates of the progress. We aim to do this over 2 months as most of us are front line workers, so we have to continue work as well as making this target achievable.

We will start this on 1st July and finish on 31st October and as mentioned, I will post regular updates on our progress.

Thank you

xxx