We have just bought some of these great PS Vitas with some cool games for the children on the wards at St George’s. Time moves slowly when you’re in bed all day in hospital, hopefully these will add a bit of fun!
Momentum Meeting
Claudia, Darren and Amy are meeting with the lovely people at Momentum today. They have done some great work at Kingston Hospital and we are hoping to work with them on improvements to St George’s.
I have been playing some more with the website. I have now gone right through the Christian’s Story Page and made every day an individual entry on the blog, rather than a long page.
This means that I can now filter out all the fund raising posts, which I have linked to in the menu or all the posts about Christian, which is what the new Christian’s Story menu link now points to.
It now makes it possible to link to any individual story or fund raising event and share it on Facebook or Twitter.
I think it’s time I stopped fiddling now.
More edits to Christian’s Story
I have had a bit of time to work on the Christian’s Story Page and added a new event which I omitted the first time around….
28th September 2007
Last week Christian had a bone scan and a CT scan and the results came back today, he is clear of cancer!
We’ve got a long way to go and he is still in danger from the treatment, his kidney function, for example, is still not what it should be, but we are obviously very relieved.
There was a strange moment in the school car park when he started back at school. A whisper went around the crowds of parents and teachers when they saw Christian, and as he stood there looking confused, a round of applause went up from everybody around him.
Updated Christian’s Story page
I received an email yesterday from a lady whose 4 year old son has just had a relapse from a Wilm’s Tumour, a very similar situation we were in a few years ago. She told me that Christian’s story has given her a glimmer of hope during a terrible and frightening time. The fact that it has helped at least one person has given me the inspiration to go through Christian’s Story page and get rid of dead links and break the text up with some pictures.
The fact is, children do recover from relapsed cancer, and Christian is living proof, we sincerely wish the best for Karen and her family.
Quick visit to Great Ormond Street
Claudia is with Christian at Great Ormond Street Hospital today for a biennial check up on his kidney. It’s a good reminder of how lucky we are.
The New Site is now live
We have been working on the new website which should be a lot easier for us to update and for people to navigate and share. Please have a look around and, if you have a moment, test it out, try sharing a story on facebook or twitter, for example. The Home Page is a good start.
Also, if you have not joined the mailing list, please do so, we promise any contact will be short infrequent, and we will never share the mailing list with anybody else.
I’d like to thank Will Jane for helping me with getting this site live and the lovely people at Gravity Global for offering to host the site for free!
Piano Playing at Grandfather’s Wedding
Christian is still doing well, and his piano playing is improving, he recently played the piano at the church service for his grand father’s, wedding. Congratulations Bob and Annie!
A great donation for a fabulous cause
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.
Posted in Blog, Fund Raising, Things We've Done. Tagged with Accuvein, Charity, donation, Lancashire foundation, Samuels Charity.
Christian’s new Hobby – Writing 3D Games
Christian’s latest hobby is game writing, you can try his latest games here.
Christmas gifts for the children at St George’s
We have had a great day handing out presents to the Children who are unfortunate enough to be at St George’s over Christmas. Christian was a fab Elf and we had lots of help from the wonderful staff at the hospital. Henry stepped in as official photographer and took some photos which are here. I have included a hi-res copy which parents can use for personal use as they wish, just press the download button on the photo you want.
Posted in Blog, Things We've Done. Tagged with cancer, children, Christmas, Father Christmas, gifts, Henry, kids, presents, Santa, St George's.
