To support Harrison and his family

Hi, my name is Louise Farrar and we are fundraising to help the Bentley family financially to make such a difficult situation a little easier.

On Sunday evening (18th August) Harrison, who is 15 years old and due to sit his GCSEs next summer was playing football in his back garden, then later he watched the football with his dad. He then started to get a migraine, which wasn’t unusual for him, so he went to bed to sleep it off.

Monday morning he was woken by his dad and to his horror his left hand side was numb and he couldn’t see out of his right eye. Then his lip started to droop and he was struggling to talk. His mum called 111 and they sent an ambulance straight away.

On his arrival at A&E things started to go down hill quickly, Harrison was struggling to breathe and swallow, so he was rushed to resus, put in to an induced coma and admitted to ICU.

A brain scan revealed that he had a bleed in his brain stem (the part of the brain that controls many functions, including breathing and swallowing) due to a cavernoma (an abnormal cluster of blood vessels) that had formed. Yesterday Harrison underwent brain surgery to remove the cavernoma to prevent any further bleeds. He was in theatre for a gruelling 15 hours!!

Harrison’s surgery was successful, but he and his family, together with the help of all the amazing family and friends they have around them, have a long journey ahead of them to enable Harrison to rehabilitate; to learn to walk, talk and do the things that most of us take for granted.

As one can appreciate, this has been an horrific time for his mum, Nicola, his dad, Phil and his sister Elissia. Phil and Nicola are self-employed, so what has happened will put a huge strain on the family financially. They still need to pay the bills to keep a roof over their heads, but understandably have been at Harrison’s bedside, unable to work. They are the loveliest, hard working family, that would never ask anyone for anything, yet they have a heart of gold and would do anything for anyone else. So now it’s time that they need our help!

We are doing this fundraiser to try and make things a little easier for them in the earlier days whilst they find their feet and so Phil doesn’t have to go to work abroad and can be there, where he needs to be to support Nicola and Elissia with Harrison’s care.

Any donation you can afford to give, no matter how small would be hugely appreciated and would go a long way to making this awful situation just that bit more bearable for them. I know as a community we can help them massively!!

Thanks so much for reading.