TOPAZ's CHARITY

The Sick Children's Trust has been my chosen charity for some time now. I donate every Christmas instead of sending Topaz Christmas cards and try to raise money wherever else possible.

We have had personal experience with the charity and I hope to eventually 'pay them back' or at least cover our costs whilst they looked after us.

When my son, Winter, was born 8 years ago, we were told he may need surgery when he was born. He had a condition called TOF (Trachea-Oesophageal-Fistula) which meant that he would be unable to swallow. And if he did, any fluid/milk would go into his lungs! So he wouldn't survive without the surgery.

Fortunately, as soon as he was born he was sent straight to Addenbrookes and had surgery at one day old.

Imagine being a new parent, your baby is in Intensive Care, you live 20 miles away from the hospital, where will you stay? You just want to be near your baby, and if you don't live near Addenbrookes (it was a 40 mile round trip) how will you see them? Drive 40 miles everyday? Stay in a Travel lodge? How would we afford the petrol and hotel fees? 

This is were The Sick Children's Trust (SCT) comes in.... they had a place for us to stay on hospital grounds! We were so lucky! There were only limited rooms available and as our baby boy was in NICU we were allowed a room. 

We stayed at the SCT House called Chestnut House for 24 nights. 

At the SCT house we had a bedroom and bathroom to ourselves, and a shared kitchen, dining room and living room where we could cook food and talk to other parents in a similar situation. There was also a washing machine and dryer to use as well.

This doesn't sound like a big deal, but if you are only wearing the clothes you came to hospital in and there is only a vending machine on the ward, then after 24 days/nights a sofa, washing machine and fridge is an absolute blessing! Winter was discharged after 24 days and we bought him home for the first time.

In 2014 he had another routine surgery relating to his condition. But this time the operation went badly wrong! His health was rapidly declining and he was admitted to Intensive Care again. Our lives were suspended, not knowing if he would pull through. Several surgeries later we were told he would be hospital at least 4 weeks!

We were exhausted, emotionally and physically drained. Our main priority was to see that Winter recovered, but there was other things to consider...

We lived 20 miles away, we needed to sleep, we didn't want to leave him, we needed to eat, we were both self-employed and had no idea what we were going to do. We had bills to pay at home and bills to pay at work. We only had the clothes we were standing up in and needed a wash! We also had to buy 3 x meals a day from the canteen and weren't earning any money.

Again we were approached at his bedside by the Sick Children's Trust. They knew that we weren't local and needed to stay close to our boy (2 years old) in such a critical state. This time we were offered a room at Acorn House, the other SCT House on Addenbrookes grounds. This was a bigger house for more 'long-term' parents. We met parents whose children had cancer, had terrible accidents and as a parent all you want to do is be near your sick child!

Again there was a fridge (we had our own shelf to store food), laundry facilities (we could wash and dry clothes) and a bedroom . We took it in turns to spend the night on the ward with Winter and the other parent got a-good-nights-sleep away from the bleeping of the machines and crying of the other poorly children.

Above all the Sick Children's Trust gave us somewhere to go. Somewhere to go and make a cup of tea maybe have a little cry, just do 'normal things' and gather our heads before we went back to the ward to 'be strong' and show our baby 'it's gonna be ok'!

We stayed at Acorn House 58 nights (8 weeks) before Winter was discharged. I don't honestly know how we would have made it without the Home from Home that the SCT provides.

It costs £30 a day for a family to stay at the houses to cover the cost of the facilities. We stayed with the Sick Children's Trust for 82 nights in total. So its my aim to raise £2460 for them! I've sent around £500 to date and will keep on going. 

This charity is amazing and our time at hospital would have been even more stressful without the SCT, please help me support them were you can. Thank you