100 Rounds For Florence!

I'm doing 100 rounds to help raise money for this incredible young lady Florence. Please donate and help support the family with lost hours and medical/travel costs, and also help Flo's time in recovery as fun and stress free as possible.

Flo’s story:

On the 2nd August, she went into Peterborough hospital for a check up, of a recurring rash Florence has been having for the last 4 years. She gets a rash, joint pain and fever, normally these issues resolve themselves, but for some reason this time, each day, the temperature got worse. On the 7th August, her blood pressure dropped to a dangerously low level, 45/26 or something along those lines. They took her to HDU and gave antibiotics thinking she had sepsis (which she didn’t). The very next day she got sent in an ambulance to Nottingham hospital, to being treatment for Systemic Onset Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis. Don’t be fooled by the Arthritis bit, this isn’t swelling of the joints as we expect arthritis to be, it’s inflammation of all her systems.

Less than 48 hours later the family are sent to intensive care as Florence went into something called Macrophage Activation Syndrome / HLH. This is where your body creates to many Macrophages, and they attack her entire body. Her organs began to fail as this attack from her own immune system stopped her kidneys working, attacked her blood vessels, her heart, her liver, every organ began to struggle.

She was put to sleep and incubated while the doctors gave medication that tried stops this reaction. They described it as trying to stop an avalanche, once the avalanche has already started to fall. I have no idea now she did it, but once the meds kicked in, little Florence started to recover a little bit each day. After 4 days of being on a kidney filter, they turned it off, then another 4 days passed and they took her off the ventilator and woke her up. Then she began to say the odd word and move.

Fast forward to now and she’s walking, talking, eating, drinking and bossing her parents about just like before all this happened.

They remained in Nottingham hospital, and she is receiving treatment for HLH. It’s pretty nasty treatment, for a pretty nasty illness. She has to have a lengthy corse of chemotherapy to calm her bone marrow down and stop the reaction happening again. While this is going on she’s also having physio and rehab to get her body working again.

After a couple more procedures Flo has finally come home, although she will need to return for treatment and blood tests, but Florence will be better off at home with her family while she recovers. Baby steps, but she is getting better!

The kindness and understanding the village has shown the family has been overwhelming. So I wanted to do my bit, and raise money to reduce the pressure of time off work for hospital appointments, good quality care, and also ease the cost of everyday enjoyment for Florence and her lovely family.