amanda du toit
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Fundraising for Great Ormond Street Hospital Children's Charity
Story
On Sunday 16th September I will be running my first half marathon. Some years ago I ran the London Marathon in aid of the Arthritis Trust, a charity that supports those suffering from this terrible, painful disease, and their families. My daughter Morgan is one of those people, and she became a patient at Great Ormond Street hospital when she was diagnosed with Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis at the age of 5 - an autoimmune condition in which the immune system attacks the body's own tissues. Its not known exactly why this happens, and there is currently no cure.
When we first visited Great Ormond Street, Morgan was struggling to walk on a daily basis, she had to have fluid drained from her knees, ankles, feet and toes a couple of times in the first two years. She was on pain killers, steroids, medication to counteract the affects of medication, and the hardest to deal with for everyone was being injected on a weekly basis with a drug administered by myself and her dad which is used to treat cancer patients which had been proven to help some Arthritis sufferers to manage or mask the pain it causes. As well as this she went to appointments every 6 weeks for blood tests, regular paediatric appointments, eye tests every 8 weeks to ensure that there were no signs of uveitis, a side affect of the auto immune disease causing inflammation and swelling that can destroy eye tissues. That destruction can lead to poor vision or blindness.
The journey has been a difficult one made easier under the brilliant care of Great Ormond Street, whose mission is 'child first, and always'.
6 years on and although those checks and tests still take place, Morgan has finally been taken off the injections to monitor how the arthritis is now affecting her without the numbing affects of the injections.
Everyday, 618 children and young people from across the UK arrive at the hospital, UK’s largest dedicated charitable funder of medical research into children’s health.
Great Ormond Street Hospital has always depended on charitable donations to give seriously ill children the chance of a better future.
Please help me raise some money for this wonderful hospital that is helping to save young lives every day.
Thanks for taking the time to visit my JustGiving page.
Donating through JustGiving is simple, fast and totally secure. Your details are safe with JustGiving - they'll never sell them on or send unwanted emails. Once you donate, they'll send your money directly to the charity. So it's the most efficient way to donate - saving time and cutting costs for the charity.
