2020 Charity: Team fundraising for Southampton Hospital Charity

The Neonatal Intensive Care Unit which provides specialist care to sick term and pre-term (premature) newborn babies.

The state-of-the-art facility is located at the Princess Anne Hospital, Southampton. This has 37 baby cots, 23 intensive/high dependency cots and 14 special care cots.

It is one of the largest neonatal units in the country treating around 900 babies each year, from Southampton, Poole & Bournemouth, Chichester, Dorchester, Basingstoke, the Isle of Wight, Salisbury, Winchester and the Channel Islands.

Babies have survived as young as 23 weeks, with some of them only weighing 460g/1lb.

Picture a baby smaller than the size of your hand. Imagine the skill needed to care for and treat something that size.

Money raised could go towards new equipment, more resources for families, improvements to parent facilities or additional staff training. All of which could help to improve the unit even further, ensuring babies and families receive the best care possible.

Ali’s Big Swim!

Well, it’s not quite as it seems!

I am going to swim the distance of the Channel (22 miles) but it will be over the course of 1 year.

Our MD came to me and said we must set ourselves a challenge for 2020, and then raise as much sponsorship as we can to complete our challenge for our Companies chosen Charity – and this swim is my challenge.

I know it may seem very easy, so I would like to explain a little about why I have chosen this challenge. I was diagnosed with Juvenile Arthritis at the age of 3, so while i was doing all of my growing, my joints weren’t developing quite as they should. When I reached 17 the disease died out, but it left me with quite a lot of damage to most of my joints!

In 2007 I had my first hip replaced, and I was then lucky enough to have a break from any pain for a few years. Unfortunately though, more recently, a lot of my joints decided to give up one after the other! In the last 4 years I have had my other hip replaced, a knee replaced, and in March last year I had a shoulder replaced too; and I’m only in my early forties! I also have the surgeons waiting in the sidelines to replace my other knee, and the other shoulder, but I like to keep the originals for as long as I can put up with them.

Because of the recovery times and physical impact of a joint replacement I have lost any fitness I had, and therefore this swim is a considerable challenge for me.

I really hope you will support this incredible unit at Southampton General Hospital, by supporting me in my Swim Challenge.