Hello!

Thank you for taking the time to read our story. For anyone that knows us you will know we have a little boy called Marley who is turning 2 very soon. About a month ago Marley got poorly, he wasn't recovering from a fever and started to get a rash as well as just not being himself. We went back to the Dr who confirmed she was worried it could be something called kawasaki disease and wanted us to just get it checked out. This disease usually happens to children under the age of 6 and develops after about 5 days of a fever- effectively their little bodies don't know what to do and the body almost turns on itself. The symptoms are red eyes, high fever, rash (mainly on their hands and feet) and peeling skin on their fingers and toes. Marley eventually had all of these but we had no idea of any of these signs. We got sent straight to the closest hospital with a pediatric ward. Marley was put on a drip and with lots of blood tests and heart scans carried out it was they were still unsure. After 4 days we were sent home, which felt quite scary as there was no diagnosis. Within 20 minutes of being home the hospitall called us back. They had spoken to a bigger hospital who said the treatment needed to be given just in case. The scariest thing about Kawasaki disease is, going untreated it can have a lasting effect on their heart in many different ways. Statistics show if they have the treatment within 10 days their risk of heart problems drop to less than 5%. Marley had the treatment on day 10 and at which point the skin on his fingers and toes started peeling which confirmed it was 100% kawasaki disease. A few days after treatment Marley had another heart scan to ‘check’- it seemed everyone was confident, given the statistics. Unfortunately Marley's right artery had swollen which was pretty terrifying. We had to wait another week for the next scan to see if the treatment was effective which thank goodness the swelling had gone down, showing the treatment was working!! Although there is still risk in the first year of heart problems, with time the risk gets lower and with 4 perfect scans under our belt- so far, so good! Outside of taking aspirin daily and keeping up checks with a cardiologist Marley is back to being the happy little boy we all know. Without our local GP picking this up and all the incredible Dr's and nurses our little Marley could well be facing a lifetime of problems with his heart. We personally had never heard of Kawasaki disease. Speaking to Marley's pediatric doctor it seems there is very little research on this and they hope in years to come there to be a simple test that can immediately eliminate Kawasaki or identify so they can get on with treating it to avoid any heart problems.

So, as you can imagine after it touching our lives quite significantly and being so thankful every day Marley seems to have made a full recover we want to do our bit to help!

Bringing me onto the last point- I am going to run a half marathon!! Whilst to some this is not much, to me this is wild! I have barely run more than 5k in my life and honestly when i do i feel like i have run a marathon.

The majority of the money raised will go towards the research to hopefully identify this test to help get kawasaki disease easily diagnosed. With the remaining small amount we would love to get the specific children's ward Marley spent over a week on some new toys. Their dedicated play room was invaluable in distracting Marley and helping us pass the days without it all being too traumatic. We would like to get some up to date bits for all the little children who are sick and needing some distraction.

If you got this far, thanks so much for reading! My run will be on the 17th August where Ben and our healthy little Marley will be cheering me on. <3