Thanks for taking the time to visit my JustGiving page.

As some of you will know I was born with a congenital heart defect.  I was born with 2 holes in my heart a 'leaky' mitral valve.  At the age of 7 I underwent major open heart surgery to repair the holes and to repair the leak.  The operation was a sucess and apart from yearly check-ups I was able to lead a totally normal life.  Unfortunately a couple of years ago I noticed I was getting tired easily and lacked energy - this got gradually worst and so on the 16th January 2013 at age of 27 I underwent a 2nd major open heart surgery.  Prior to this surgery I made a huge decision to have a mechanical mitral valve replacement instead of a repair.  This means that hopefully I will not have to go through anymore major heart surgery but I am now a lifelong warfarin user.  The surgery started at 9am and I came out of theatre at 5pm so as you can imagine this was a huge operation.  Unfortunately my heart would not beat properly after this surgery so I had an external pacemaker was fitted for 5 days to see if my heart beat would correct itself - it didn't so on Monday 21st January 2013 I went back to theatre to have a permanent pacemaker fitted - this will need replacing approximately every 8 years for the rest of my life.

I decided to do the High Peak winter hike this year as it would be a huge achievement for me and I can not stress enough what a great cause the British Heart Foundation is.  Before, during and after my surgery I was assigned a British Heart Foundation liasion nurse and I honestly can not imagine going through this without having their support.  Please donate to this brilliant charity and help in their continued research.  Thank you in advanced for your donation.  Emily.

 

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