Help Harriet

On Saturday 14^th January 2012, seventeen volunteers made up of family and friends, descended on Derby County football stadium, in aid of a collection for the Help Harriet Trust.

We arrived at the football stadium just before 1pm and had a group photo, before we decided where everyone was going to be positioned around the outside of the football stadium.

As the fans from both Derby county and Coventry city started to arrive, we began our collection, some of us had done this before and knew what to expect, where as others were a little apprehensive.

Alot of people from Derby had read about Harriet in the Derby Evening Telegraph or were linked to Harriet`s Facebook group and regularly followed her progress, but there were also quite a few people that had not heard about Harriet.

We had been under the umbrella of the Queens Medical Centre Hospital in Nottingham for more than 2 years, Harriet`s complex neurological needs meant that most of the people we saw were from this hospital as they specialised in neurological brain disorders and other specialist areas.

When we last saw Harriet`s neurologist, Dr. William Whitehouse at the end of November 2011, he advised us that we needed more support for Harriet in our local Derby hospital and explained that more people needed to understand Harriet`s complex medical needs.

Harriet was rushed into the Derby Royal Hospital towards the middle of December 2011, with respiratory distress and had to be admitted to the Children`s Dolphin Intensive care unit for a few days. Dr. Bowker was one of the consultant doctors that looked after Harriet during her stay on Dolphin ward and said that he would be more than happy to take Harriet as one of his patients with the Derby Hospital. We received a letter a few weeks later asking us to attend a clinic at the Derby Children`s Hospital on January 13^th 2012.

While Harriet`s room was being built, we contacted several children`s charities that helped severely disabled children like Harriet, in the hope that we may get some much needed funding for some sensory equipment.

After a few months we had some good news from the Lifeline4kids charity, they had awarded Harriet an amazing £1000, to spend on sensory equipment for Harriet`s bedroom and garden area. The charity said that they would pay for the items directly and that we simply needed to send them a list of all the sensory items we required.

 

Staff at the Lighthouse nursery told us that Harriet was not herself today and seemed to struggle, as we took Harriet home it seemed that she may have come down with some sort of virus or cold.

Harriet was put to bed and we kept making sure that her heart rate and oxygen levels were at a reasonable level for Harriet, but as the day progressed, Harriet seemed to be getting worse, her oxygen levels were dropping and her heart rate was raised significantly.

We decided that we needed some help and contacted the kite team; they spoke with the relevant consultants and asked us to bring Harriet in straight away.

Harriet`s breathing was now starting to deteriorate and knew we had to get her to hospital soon, but decided to take her in the van, rather than an ambulance as Harriet was more comfortable in the upright position as her lungs could drain off the increased secretions.

As we arrived at the hospital we parked the van quickly and then rushed Harriet into the children`s Accident and Emergency Department. We told them the kite team had spoken to the relevant consultants and that Harriet was now in respiratory distress and needed urgent medical attention.

With Christmas and the colder month`s nearly upon us, we had a few more appointments with Harriet at the Queen`s Medical Hospital in Nottingham.

Harriet had been booked in with the consultant neurologist Dr. Whitehouse for some months, but we also needed to take Harriet to see the consultant spinal surgeon Dr.Grevitt and a hip surgeon for an assessment on the same day.

As we arrived at the Queen`s Medical Hospital, we found that the car parks near to the spinal unit were all full and therefore had to park quite a distance from the unit. Once parked we made our way in the bitter cold across to the spinal unit with Harriet, we booked in and were then sent to the X-Ray department for an X-Ray of Harriet`s spine and hips.