On 21st December, I am planning to join a 20 days Expedition voyage to Antarctica, the world’s coldest, highest, driest, and windiest 7th Continent.

Whilst making this journey I will be taking the Polar Plunge challenge -jumping to -5 degrees Celsius water in Antarctica- to raise awareness and fundraise for Harry and Stan’s Transplant Troopers’ Fund, which is managed by Kings College Hospital Charity.

Harry’s mum Catherine describes the origin and purpose of the Fund:

“Harry and Stan’s Transplant Troopers is a fund set up in memory of 2 beautiful boys that lost their lives, following Small Bowel Transplant. This fund replaced The Harry Matthews Bowel Transplant Trust, (when my energy ran out) and Kings College Hospital kindly took the charity on. We chose to also honour Stan as a legacy for the boys.

The fund, based at King's, helps children and families in financial crisis that have to undergo Small Bowel Transplant. The hurdles they face are huge and support is low, due to this form of transplant being relatively newer and less well known/publicised/and increased infection risks.

Funda is an amazing lady that has chosen to support the fund, when talking about her expedition to Antarctica. We are so grateful to her as we know families have continued to struggle just as we did.

Our links at King's keep us updated and explain how invaluable the fund is.

Often parents have no money for food, petrol and can lose their homes, purely due to the transplant process. The level of care required for the children up to and beyond transplantation, often requires a parent to leave their career and become the child's sole carer. Train travel is impossible directly after transplant, due to infection risks, therefore parents have to be able to drive to London, from wherever they live in the UK. Parents also stay on the ward with their child throughout. I personally remember multiple 6 weeklong admissions.

The team that runs the fund at King's, has honoured the initial Harry Matthews charity model. A professional visits these families, in hardship, regularly on the ward. This means that they are able to offer immediate financial support at point of contact, basically ensuring that it reaches the neediest."

My gateway for this expedition starts from the “End of the World “-Argentina’s small town called Ushuaia.

After sailing 36 hours to reach The Falkland Island/Malvinas to enter Antarctic waters towards mountainous remote island South Georgia.

The land of superlatives! Based on weather, ice and opportunity we will approach the Antarctic Peninsula while passing large tabular icebergs.

The final part of my journey is crossing -the Drake Passage- in 48 hours in turbulent seas.

If modern medicine does not work, I am also taking a couple of copper pennies to tape to my belly button to cure seasickness as they used to.

I will be sharing some photos of this wilderness on this fundraising page also on my Instagram account.

I'm on Instagram as @anturktica2023.