My Son, Rosco was born in October 2016 with a congenital heart defect called Transposition Of The Great Arteries. This complication means the aorta and the pulmonary arteries are ‘Transposed’  making the heart circulation incompatible with life.

Normally, oxygen-poor (blue) blood returns to the right atrium from the body, travels to the right ventricle, then is pumped through the pulmonary artery into the lungs where it receives oxygen. Oxygen-rich (red) blood returns to the left atrium from the lungs, passes into the left ventricle, and then is pumped through the aorta out to the body.  In transposition of the great arteries, the aorta is connected to the right ventricle, and the pulmonary artery is connected to the left ventricle — the opposite of a normal heart's anatomy.

Rosco was born blue at 20:20 on October 19th 2016, he required ventilation immediately and was transferred to the Paediatric Intensive Care Unit at Bristol’s childrens Hospital at just 30 minutes old. Rosco had his first heart surgery at just over 12 hours old - a ‘Balloon Atrial Septostomy’. The next 2 weeks were up and down with Rosco becoming very poorly with what was suspected to be sepsis. Thankfully, by day 13 Rosco was stable enough to undergo his open heart surgery. 

Rosco had whats called  an ‘Arterial switch’ procedure - to you and me, a method used to swap the arteries to the correct place. This surgery - the ‘Arterial Switch’ was pioneered by Sir Magdi Yacoub - a British Heart Foundation funded Professor! (I don’t think I need to explain why the BHF therefore means so much to me!)

At 25 days old we brought Rosco home for the very first time, if it wasn’t for the incredible research and dedication of those at the BHF, Rosco’s story would be very different to the one above. 

Just £24 could pay for two hours of research by an early career scientist.

I am holding a raffle at The Pheasant Inn a pub in St Newlyn East, Newquay, Cornwall. The raffle will be drawn on 19th April in the evening. Tickets are £1 each and every single penny goes to The British Heart Foundation. We have over 50 prizes already and still more to come! Including a £299 Dyson hoover, x4 Sunday lunches at The Pheasant, days out, cinema tickets, hair vouchers and lots lots more! I will start to list the prizes below. 

For every £1 you donate here I will email you a raffle ticket number - please opt in to emails from me when making the donation so I can do this!

Thank you so much and let’s raise money for this very worthy cause close to my heart ❤️

(all prizes can be held but will need to be collected from The Pheasant Inn. I’m happy to post vouchers but it will be at winners risk)