As most people who know me, know... in June 2011 I suffered a complicated pneumonia, pleurisy & a pleural effusion. I spent 4 days in a High Dependency Unit, where I had to have an emergency chest drain op due to the fact that during night 3, my lung began to fill up with fluid! (Lovely – I know!) I then spent 10 days in a respiratory ward, on what I thought was a road to recovery, however on day 2 in the ward, I was sent for a CT scan which showed that there was now a wee hole in my lung. In order to fix that I was put on some drugs which had the most wonderful side effects – for which I was given more drugs!

Anyway, after I got out of hospital, I spent 4 weeks at home with my parents learning to do things like walk & breathe at the same time! Friends and family were very supportive. I spent a further 2 weeks off work, and then had around 4 weeks of a staged return to work before returning full time. (Again – those of you who know me well will know how much I hated being off work!)

My time in (and out) of hospital gave me a real insight in to what it must be like to live with a serious lung condition. I think we all take breathing for granted! (as silly as that sounds!!)

The British Lung foundation does a lot of work and research around Lung Disease, but they also do research on Pneumonia... and that’s why I am raising money for them. The main reason I got so ill was because they couldn’t identify the specific strain of pneumonia I had...

More info on the British lung foundation and their research can be found here:

http://www.blf.org.uk/Conditions/Detail/pneumonia

and here:

http://www.blf.org.uk/Page/Research-Successes