Brendan's page

Harewood House Half Marathon, 10K &2K Fun Run 2020 · 23 February 2020 ·
Thanks for visiting my page. I'm raising money for the British Heart Foundation's research and I'd be so grateful for your support. The BHF has helped halve the number of people dying from heart and circulatory disease in the UK but sadly every day hundreds of people of all ages lose their lives.
After successes in previous sponsored hikes with the BHF, I wanted to challenge myself more than I ever have before so I decided running a trail half marathon would be a good idea.
I also have a more personal story to share about the reasons for my support for the British Heart Foundation this time around. One of my younger cousins Madisyn was born prematurely on the 28th Of August 2009, at birth she was known to have a systolic murmur.
This is her story: At 6 days old she was discharged from our local hospital & during the early hours of her first night at home, she was struggling to feed and became very breathless. The midwife came early that morning to do a routine check which turned into Madisyn needing to return to the hospital. Once there Madisyn was fitted with a feeding tube at this point as she was too breathless to feed. Then on the 14/9/09 Madisyn was diagnosed with CHD - Diagnosis: VHD (Ventricular hypertrophy) pansystolic murmur. Her echocardiogram also showed that she had a large-sized perimembranous ventricular septal defect as well as a septal defect. Surgery was going to be needed but as she was only 2 kilos in weight at the time they were keen to try to get her to gain weight & strength first. The next day she was transferred to Leeds General Infirmary hospital as her cardiac failure was getting worse. At 2 weeks old Madisyn had her 1st open-heart surgery. The surgery was a success but obviously, the stresses during this time for my auntie wasn't the best, imagine being told the risks and having to sign a consent form for surgery knowing these risks when all you want to do is hold your baby.
After a few weeks, she was transferred to our local hospital for recovery before she could go home. Once discharged lots of regular hospital appointments for various things mostly heart-related checkups became the norm. However, in September 2012 on another routine clinic appointment, it became apparent that more surgery was needed and would have to be done as soon as possible or the risk of increasing the hypertrophy of her right vertical would lead to right ventricular failure. In November 2012 Madisyn had her second heart surgery which was another success with better results than expected. In 2017 while at another routine clinic appointment, we were told that Madisyn had been left with supravalvular pulmonary stenosis but as she wasn't showing any severe symptoms no surgery was needed & hopefully never will be.
Madisyn is now a healthy (as healthy as she can be considering her history) 10-year old who loves to take part in sports, one of them being kickboxing which she absolutely loves. Madisyn is fully aware of her health and knows to have a break if needed. But shes excelling in life and if it wasn't for the BHF's research or all the doctor's & nurses who saved her life she wouldn't be where she is today.
It's only thanks to support from people like us too that the BHF can create new treatments and discover new cures to help more children like Madisyn & our family. £5 could help fund one of our helpline cardiac nurses, offering support to anxious families affected by heart disease, £10 could buy the equipment researchers use to grow cells for their research into heart defects & £20 could contribute to lab costs for researchers dedicated to saving children from the trauma of repeated surgery.
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