Earlier this year we lost a wonderful colleague and great friend, Gary Theobald. I am doing the '496 Challenge' this October to raise funds in his memory to purchase some vitally needed equipment for our Intensive Care Unit.

The challenge involves running every day of October with 1km on the first of the month, 2km on the 2nd of the month and so on. By the 31st October I will have run 496km and will probably have to go home in a wheel-barrow on the last day! It’s a daunting challenge but one I am committed to doing to honour Gary’s memory.

As one of the largest specialist cardiothoracic hospitals in the UK LHCH is used to leading the field in the care of people with complex heart and lung diseases. Recently our Intensive Care Unit trialled a new, state of the art minimally invasive monitoring system. For those who are most poorly this equipment provides real time data for medical teams so that patients, who are not recovering as they should, can be assessed quickly and further action taken. This helps to significantly reduce the risks of post-operative complications, leads to shorter recovery times, helping to get them home to their loved ones quicker and helps us treat even more patients.

These machines will benefit the over 2,000 patients who have open heart surgery with us each and every year and my target is to raise enough money to purchase one of them in Gary’s name.

Any support you can give would be greatly appreciated and if you want to tag along on one of my runs, feel free to join!

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