Thank you for taking the time to visit my JustGiving page.

On June 13th myself and a team of 47 others are taking part in the Blenheim Palace Triathlon in aid of Thinking of Oscar.  Our objective is to raise £100,000 in order to be able to fund a new Paediatrics Procedures Unit for the Oxford Children's hospital.  This facility will benefit hundreds and hundreds of children every year and is something that the hospital are in desperate need of. The unit will also be named after Oscar which will be a great tribute to him.

I have always wanted to compete in the Blenheim Triathlon and so when Oscar died it felt like the only choice in terms of event to start proceedings with, as Hannah had spent so much of her maternity leave walking both him and his big sister Holly around the lake.  

Below is our story and we would be so grateful should you chose to sponsor us........

On Thursday 19th June 2014 my son, Oscar Noah Cole, died. Oscar was in hospital being treated routinely for an infection but nobody imagined that he would not make a full recovery. As we watched over Oscar in hospital on the day that he died, standing there in disbelief, holding him in our arms until his heart beat his last beat, we made some promises to one another which we are committed to. We are determined to create a layer on top of our pain which resembles a quality of life. Our life before losing Oscar was a charmed one and we knew it. We were a very happy family with two kids who adored each other, a great circle of friends and jobs we enjoyed. But it was a conventional life. Now our life is far from conventional and for it to be tolerable it simply has to be remarkable. In order not to feel trapped in our own existence we have to achieve things that we would not otherwise have achieved. We need to ensure that whilst Oscar’s life was only in its opening chapters this is only the beginning of his story.

On January 8th 2015 we finally were able to understand what caused Oscar's death having had to wait nearly 7 months. Essentially it was a combination of bad luck and bad timing with Oscar contracting Rotavirus during his treatment which in turn lead to Encephalitis, which is a very rare outcome. You can read more about what happened on our website - www.thinkingofoscar.com. Finding out why Oscar died has not changed our view on why we have set up this charity and if anything it helps us carry on in our lives hoping that we can help others in Oscar's memory.

Our intention from the outset was to identify a cause which goes beyond our own tragedy to address an issue of broader social interest and our primary measure of success for this campaign will be the impact that we have collectively had in our lifetimes.

The objectives for ‘Thinking of Oscar’ are:

The relief of sickness and promotion of the health of children, young people and their families whilst in hospital care across England, in particular but not exclusively by:

 - Providing support and activities to patients (children) their families and medical teams who strive to make their time in hospital as comfortable as possible.

  - Providing funding for the development of research and development into and the provision of improved diagnostic techniques and technology.

  - Providing increased access to relevant knowledge and data via the sharing of best practice and the application of technology.

We are currently in the process of acquiring a HMRC Gift Aid number which means that we cannot at this stage claim Gift Aid on your contributions.  However once we have received this we will then retrospectively be able to apply for Gift Aid manually.  If you are happy for us to do this then please include the word "YES" at the end of your donation and we will get in touch with you at the appropriate time.

Thank you so much for your support.