On 10 December 2018 we prematurely lost Laura. She was a wife to Keelan, a mother to Lorcan, a daughter to John & Sheila, a sister to Andrew and so many other things to so many other people who knew and loved her.

Through our heartbreak, we are asking friends and family to donate here in her memory to help support the Buddy Bear Trust that has helped and supported Laura, Keelan and Lorcan so much. We will also be sharing your donations with the Intensive Care Unit that did all they could to try to save Laura and cared for her so well in her last hours she was with us.

Although the majority of Laura's childhood was spent in Huddersfield, England, from 2001 she began to make Northern Ireland her permanent home. She attended Ballymena Academy for four years before briefly skipping back over the Irish Sea to Manchester University to study what would become her vocation, nursing.

Shortly after starting work on ward B1 of Antrim Area Hospital - the hospital that would become her professional focus - she met the man who would become the love of her life, Keelan, who embarked on a (ultimately successful) six month flirtation mission. They were married on 18 September 2014.

Two and a half years later on 19 December 2016 Laura gave birth to their beautiful baby boy, Lorcan. Shortly after his birth, Lorcan was diagnosed with quadriplegic cerebral palsy. This turned Laura and Keelan's world upside down but like any other challenge Laura was faced with she met it with determination, compassion and love. But it was through this challenge that Laura and Lorcan developed an instinctive and unbreakable mother-son bond.

In spite of all the additional care needs that Lorcan required, she returned to work as the ward manager of the Direct Assessment Unit, a unit which under her stewardship would become an acclaimed example of patient care and hospital modernisation. Not one for resting on her laurels and wanting to continue her learning and development she was due to side step from her ward managers post and start in a new temporary nurse practitioner role on PTU ward on Monday 10 December. Sadly it was a role she wouldn’t get the chance to start.

In the early hours of Sunday 9 December Laura was at home in bed with Lorcan when she suffered a migraine, something she had lived with since her teenage years but this time sadly it caused her to pass out and her heart to stop beating. Despite the best efforts of her Dad and four paramedics Laura couldn’t be revived and suffered catastrophic brain damage. She was taken to Antrim Area Hospital where she bravely fought on while on life support under the devoted care of the medical and nursing staff of ICU. At lunchtime on Monday 10 December however, the strain on Laura's body became too much and we had to take the heartbreaking decision to take her off life support. Laura passed away peacefully, surrounded by her family shortly after.

Rest in peace and love. X