Story
My name is Sienna. I’m thirteen years old and have two gorgeous little sisters,
Scarlett (11) and Seren (7), who are my best friends. I have a very active
social life and keep very busy with swimming, netball, and piano lessons. I absolutely love to play football and am learning to speak Spanish.
However it could all have been so different!
When I was just eight months old I was
admitted to Leighton Hospital, Crewe feeling very poorly and with a temperature of 40 degrees. After being diagnosed with tonsillitis I was sent home. The next day, Sunday 12th December 2010, my mummy and daddy took me back to hospital as I had started to feel even more poorly. As it turned out, I was so ill that even the doctors and nurses at Leighton Hospital couldn't help me and I had to be transferred to the intensive care unit at Alder Hey Hospital, Liverpool. At the time the doctors thought I had something called 'Streptococcal Septicaemia' but it later turned out I also had Swine Flu and the doctors told my family I possibly only had 24 hours until loss of life. However, it wasn't as simple as putting me in an ambulance and sending me to Alder Hey as my little body
had gone into 'Toxic Shock' and was in the process of shutting down completely.
A specialist team from the North West Paediatric Service (NWTS) had to be called in at 4am in the morning and it took them nearly TEN HOURS to stabilise me and prepare me for the journey to Liverpool.
The NWTS was only set up in November 2010 (just one month before I fell ill) and is made up of a dedicated team of paediatricians, doctors and nurses who transport critically ill children throughout the North of England and Wales to specialist hospitals like AlderHey. There is no doubt that these wonderful people, along with the doctors and nurses of the Alder Hey Intensive Care Unit saved my life and I shall always be grateful to them.
My mummy spoke to the NWTS team to thank them for saving my life and to see what we could do to help fund this very important service.
So far my mummy & daddy and all our wonderful family and friends have helped me raise £204,750 in the last ten years. We have done lots of different fundraising events, including skydives, a London to Paris bike ride, The Three Peaks Challenge,The Four Peaks Challenge, The Wild Warrior, The Manchester 10k run, The Paris Marathon,charity Auction Nights, two Ascot Ladies Race Days and I even did my first 10k run last year. Mummy’s family business, Concept Car Credit, donates £10 for every car it sells too.
All this fundraising has helped to buy some really important equipment, including two Oxylog ventilators, two training manikins and a Sonosite Ultrasound machine. However, this life-saving equipment is very expensive so we need to keep on raising money for the NWTS to help all the other poorly children in the North West. I am living proof that this life saving equipment changes peoples lives forever. The next fundraising event is going to be a football related tournament, we've never tried this before and it's something close to mine and my sisters heart.
A very BIG THANK YOU to everyone who has supported our fund-raising efforts so far and helped us raise over two hundred thousand pounds!!
Lots of Love
Sienna Lilly Malley xxxxx