Thanks for taking the time to visit my JustGiving page.

Having held the view for many years that anyone who wants to run 26 miles must be mad – I mean -that’s what cars are for!  I have decided to run the Brighton Marathon on the 15 April 2012 for a very good reason that I would like to share with you.

On the 5 March 2011, I dropped my son Ryan off for football training as usual on a Saturday morning.  However, the horrific events that followed, put life firmly into perspective.  It is rare that something so powerful occurs to make people stop and think about how much we take for granted.  It most definitely proved to me that the silly stuff that we sometimes get worked up about is really not important in the grand scheme of things.

At the start of the warm up, the team jogged around the park and returned to their kit bags to have a drink and get footballs to begin normal training.  Ben Daniels, the team’s Goalkeeper, complained of not feeling well and suddenly collapsed.

His team manager immediately took all the correct action and the boys, realising that Ben required urgent medical help, ran to an Ambulance that happened to be pulled up on the road next to the park.  The boys grabbed the medic – even taking his bags – and ran him back to where the team manager was providing Ben with mouth to mouth and heart compressions.

Ben could not have had a better chance.  His team manager had immediately provided all the correct aid and the boys had managed to get a medic to Ben within minutes of his collapse.  Ben’s parents arrived at the park in time to go with their son as he was rushed to hospital.

Sadly, Ben did not recover and died in hospital.

In my very simple view, this should not happen.  We bring children into this world – we care for and protect them to the best of our abilities.  As parents, our deepest fear is that something may happen to our children, in the way of accident or illness.  I had never even considered that a normal, healthy boy of 14 would just collapse and die.

Ben had suffered Sudden Cardiac Death – sometimes abbreviated to SADS – a condition I had only vaguely heard of from a professional footballer, Marc-Vivien Foé, suffering the same during a game in 2003.

I hate the training.  I hate the idea of the run.  This is not something I will enjoy; not something I am doing to say that I have done it - but I will do it because I am sure that Ben and other children who have suffered from this condition would love to be here and running about - but unfortunately they are not.

If I can succeed in raising the profile of this charity and making you all aware of this condition, we can provide extra money to allow CRY to carry out screening.  If only one person is found to have this condition before it is too late and another set of parents are saved the horrific anguish of losing a child, then it will have all been worth it.

Thank you for taking the time to read this, I hope you will feel able to help and please feel free to pass this letter to anyone else that knows me.

My very best regards,

Keith

 

 

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