Lillia's story.

Lillia was our beautiful little girl, born on 27th February 2007. Unfortunately she was born with an extremely rare and fatal lung condition, alveolar capillary dysplasia, which we knew nothing about for the first two weeks of her life, as we enjoyed being a family at home together.

In March, Lillia was airlifted by The Wiltshire Air Ambulance and spent a week in the PICU at Bristol Children's Hospital, where her condition was eventually diagnosed and the devastating news of there being no treatment or cure, was broken to us. Sadly, she passed away on 19th March 2007 at just three weeks old. Having those two weeks together as a family gave us wonderful memories and we are forever grateful to Lillia for her strength in giving us those two precious weeks at home as she battled bravely to stay alive.

Raising money for the two charities that supported us at the time, has always helped us to keep Lillia's memory alive and over the years we have held multiple charity golf days and raised over £30,000 which we have split equally between the two charities. A few years ago we set up the Just Giving page in order to be able to claim gift-aid on people's kind and generous donations.

This year marks Lillia's 18th birthday and so we are getting involved with a few events to mark this milestone in her life. We'll keep you updated of all that we do, the first event being the Bristol Half Marathon, which Maisie is running in memory of her little sister:

Maisie will be running the Bristol Half Marathon in May and as a family, we are super proud of her taking on this challenge to raise money for the air ambulance and the hospital department that cared for Lillia, helping them to continue the vital work they do.

If you are able to, Maisie would appreciate any donations and please think of her on the 11th of May when she is pacing the streets of Bristol! She is hoping to raise £200 to continuing adding to the monies already raised by people over the years at our fundraising events and shared between these charities.

As always, we are very grateful for your support.

Thank you, the Calthrop family. xxxxx