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A great donation for a fabulous cause

ByPeter

Thank you to the fantastic Lancashire foundation who donated £3,400 to pay for an amazing piece of kit (http://www.accuvein.com/) that makes inserting cannulas (needles for blood) much less painful for children. We have bought four of these wonderful machines together with Samuel’s Charity.

Thank you to Adam King for putting The Christian Blandford Fund forward for this.

Martin, from Samuel’s charity, explained the need for these very well…

We are looking to buy two more infrared scanners that shows where veins are so injections are made first time, every time.This is huge. No one likes injections but it can take 2,3,4 or sometimes more attempts to find a vein, especially after weeks or months of treatment. This is not only painful but very distressing for many kids (and adults!). Some medicines make you more sensitive so an injection feels more like being stabbed than a ‘sharp scratch’. Very often prolonged medicine treatment like Chemotherapy does this. Not to mention the psychological impact of worrying about frequent and painful injections.Now, because of support and donations, we bought one of these amazing pieces of equipment, an Accuview. Being able to get the vein first time cuts down the amount of pain and upset hugely. But that’s not all. Small kids have small veins and often you have to ‘root around’ (a medical term, apparently!) to find the right position. The Accuview solves this – they can get in the vein first time and no rooting around, seriously reducing the pain down.I spoke to the nurses yesterday and they all loved the Accuview, even the most senior nurses were raving about it!

This one piece of equipment has already made many kids on the ward much happier, and their days will not be as overshadowed with the worry of painful, repeated attempts for injections.

This doesn’t just help the children, though. As a parent I hate to see my kids go through pain. It was one of the hardest things I have ever done asking Samuel to have repeated and painful procedures, knowing it would hurt, and not being able to take the pain away or protect him. With Accuview we can go some way to doing this and that means so much to me.

Each one costs a few thousand pounds so we still need help as we need two more of these amazing machines for the other childrens wards at St Georges Hospital.

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