Emily’s fundraiser

I love my exercise and have been running since I was 11, but now I am running with my friends to help raise some money for a very special little girl who lives locally to me.

Emily was born with spina bifida and hydrocephalus (water on the brain). When she was a day old, she had an operation to repair the hole in her spine caused by the spina bifida. When she was 10 days old, she had a shunt fitted inside her head to alleviate the fluid build-up in her brain. Emily uses a wheelchair full time and has some challenges with her learning as a result of the hydrocephalus.

Recently, Emily has spent a lot of time in hospital and had lots of operations on her shunt which had stopped working. She is still continuing have treatment until the problem with her shunt is resolved. She has been left extremely traumatised after her experience in hospital. Emily will always need operations at various points in her life, so as a family they are trying to get her to overcome her fears that she has been left with. Unfortunately, she is only at school part time at the moment due to the fact she has more problems with her shunt making her tired and dizzy, she is currently awaiting a further operation to enable this to be resolved which unfortunately, had been scheduled for last Monday but had to be cancelled due to an emergency taking priority.

Emily is a really special little girl and has incredible strength, she always has a big smile on her face and i want to raise as much money as i can to enable her quality of life to be improved!