Recently I fell ill and was sent to hospital with a diagnosis of double pneumonia and sepsis. I was in ITU at George Elliot Hospital near Coventry and within a few days i was ventilated. After I was taken off the ventilator I did not recover as expected due to the formation of blood clots in my lungs and my health took a turn for the worse and I was put back on the ventilator, however this did not have the affects it had previously and I was not showing signs of recovery. Luckily for me I had Glenfield Hospital fairly close to my home and the ECMO recovery team was called to George Elliot Hospital where they stabilised me and took me to Glenfield Hospital.

Without ECMO and Glenfield Hospital I wouldn’t have lived to tell my story, raise awareness for ECMO and raise money to help fund ECMO care and hopefully get ECMO into more hospitals.

ECMO stands for Extra Corporeal Membrane Oxygenation and it is an artifical lung that allows the oxygenisation of the blood and removal of waste carbon dioxide, allowing the patients lungs to rest and recover. ECMO is used on very sick patients who do not respond to the usual treatments of the ventilator and would die without ECMO.