Medical Operation & Accomodation Funding

Hi, my name is Chris and this campaign is all about helping my son and my partner and there is paragraphs containing more details about what has happened and why we as a family need help.

My son John is currently 8 years old and he was born with a heart condition called Tetralogy of Fallot. This is a heart defect that is present at birth. When John was a baby he had to have correctional surgery to make his heart work properly. We always knew hat there would be more hospital visits past his yearly heart scans. February this year he had an MRI scan that revealed that one of his valves is too small and isn't working and because of this another valve is working overtime; this has caused the overworked valve to leak around 35-40% blood in to the right chest cavity. 

We had a consultation with a surgeon at Bristol Children's Hospital and have advised us that he needs to once again undergo open heart surgery to correct the issues in his heart or he will die. The procedure he needs to correct this is fairly straightforward according to the surgeon but will involve them breaking his sternum to get access to the heart, stop his heart to operate and then put a stent in to the valve that hasn't been working and replace the valve that has been overworked. This procedure and initial hospital time is anticipated to be 10 days with a 5 to 8 week recovery time at home. We don't have a date for his operation as of writing this post but the surgeons have suggested it will be before Christmas this year.

Now this on it's own is enough to stress out the calmest of families as you can imagine the risks behind a heart operation are quite intense. 

However all of this being said that isn't all we have going on! My partner Kayleigh has currently got a herniated slipped disc that has caused a fluid leak around the L2 nerve in her spine. This happened around April 2018 and this fluid leak is putting a lot of pressure on the nerves and is causing a lot of severe pain for my partner. For the first few months of this back pain it was misdiagnosed as Sciatica and it was treated as such. We only found out is was what it is around 10 months ago after a series of collapses cause my partner Kayleigh to go in to hospital and have an MRI scan.

We've had a consultation for what can be done to sort this issue out and we have an operation scheduled for the end of September 2019 which should (90% chance) fix the issue entirely as if it had never happened. For the past 16 months my partner has been off work sick, used all of her statutory sick pay and been let go from her job due to ill health. We have gone the standard route of claiming a benefit here in the UK known as ESA which is basically what the government pays people when they are unable to work for medical reasons however they decided around 4 months ago that despite the fact that Kayleigh struggles with day to day jobs like putting the washing in and cooking dinner as well as not being able to walk unaided on her own and taking a variety of controlled painkillers that she is 100% fit for work and cut off her ESA money. We have got a mandatory reconsideration for ESA that may end up with legal action depending on the result but the fact that they have cut this out has had a major impact on our financial situation and what we earn on a monthly basis doesn't cover our living costs even after budgeting. 

Due to all of the things going on you can imagine the effect it has been having on us as a family and each of us as an individual.

Our eldest child Abigale is currently 11 and she has been an absolute star in all of this but with her mum and her younger brother both having these procedures she is worried, stressed, anxious and well scared to be honest as we all are. 

The purpose of this campaign in all honesty is to finally ask for help. With my partner not working and my income being the only income source at the moment we are not able to afford accommodation, travel and and contingency money for an emergency situation. Myself and Kayleigh are very proud people and it has taken us a long time to decide to actually post this campaign. We have put a target on there that we know will cover the costs of both operations and we are both grateful and thankful to anyone that even reads or shares this. We don't expect anyone to put anything towards our problems but if you decide to support our cause then I cannot thank you enough! 

Thank you for reading.