Having recently spent 5 months in The Countess of Chester hospital including 3 months in an induced coma (non-Covid related),  I’m now in my  rehabilitation phase and 5 months on I need to reset my short and medium term goals and look back on my journey since being woken up.

While I was recovering in ICU, I was sometimes given the opportunity to go outside into the garden. Something simple but it took so much effort to get me there.  A Doctor, nurses and physios were all involved in taking me on the trip to the garden.  It involved moving my bed along with all the equipment down the corridors, into lifts, down more corridors and into the garden.  There is no doubt that seeing the sky and feeling the air is wonderful and it is restful.  Unfortunately, the journey to the garden was neither of those things!  I would feel guilty for causing so much fuss for such a short trip to the garden and all the manoeuvring could sometimes feel quite stressful.  

I had such amazing care from everyone at the hospital and I mean everyone.  They all worked so hard and never gave up on me.  However, I have had a bit of a battle to get up and about since coming home and certainly walking again has been a challenge.  I just keep setting myself small goals and aim for them.  This next goal has been done with the hospital in mind; joining together my personal goal with the idea of raising some much needed funds so here it is the 5x5x50 challenge.....

A 5 kilometre walk by my 50th birthday, at the end of the month, also being 5 months since coming out of hospital (therefore 5x5x50).

The Blue Skies Balcony Appeal is a new appeal to build a garden balcony on the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) so that the poorly patients can benefit from the outdoors in a safe and infection-controlled environment. All patients, their visitors and staff are set to benefit from this innovative improvement that will make it easier and safer to move patients outside with no loss of space to the existing unit which opened in 2014.

Please sponsor me if you can.

Thank you,

Alison xx