Rudy is a 14 year old boy from Cardiff who is incredibly resilient, happy and sociable, with a very cheeky sense of humour!

Rudy was born with multiple haemangiomas (very rare form of benign tumours filled with blood) on his face, body, and in his brain. Unfortunately, at just one week old the haemangiomas in Rudy’s brain bled and left him fighting for his life.

Rudy thankfully pulled through, but was left with considerable injury to his brain and subsequently has right-sided hemiparesis (weakness) meaning he uses a wheelchair, has very limited speech, is partially sighted and has learning disabilities. He also suffers from drug resistant epilepsy.

Two years ago Rudy had major brain surgery at Bristol Children’s Hospital, in an attempt to reduce the hundreds of seizures he had been getting every single day for virtually 11 years, which were getting progressively worse.

Neuro surgeons carried out a hemispherotomy corpus callosum - where they basically disconnected the left hemisphere of his brain from the right - effectively leaving him with just half of his brain function.

The 12 hour surgery went very well initially, but unfortunately Rudy had complications in his recovery and was very poorly for some months in hospital, developing hydrocephalus (raised pressure and fluid on the brain) needing 6 more operations and eventually a shunt inserted.

Rudy however battled through all of this without complaint and has not had a single seizure since! This has already made a huge difference to Rudy’s quality of life and his family’s, as well as improving his long term prognosis.

Rudy’s mobility and arm function is still not quite back to where it was and so he needs weekly independent physiotherapy to try and get him back there, so that he can truly make the most of living seizure free.

Rudy’s Trust Fund was set up to help Rudy's family pay for independent physiotherapy, and for any equipment or other therapies that he needs throughout his life. The fund has been vital in making a huge difference to Rudy's physical abilities and Rudy's quality of life.

Any donations are therefore hugely appreciated and will be used to help Rudy with his continuous therapy and rehabilitation following brain surgery.

Huge thanks for your support!