O.k, we have a charity money raiser going on. Please read - Floorskills is offering a 3 day LVT level 2 course that will go up for bidding. The highest bidder wins the course. The winning bidders monies will be donated to charity in full. The charity is www.justgiving.com/willowsmountain . All you have to do is bid for the place on the course Wheres the money going ? What ever the course place bids up to, well the full amount will go to the charity. That could be £1 but hopefully a lot more. The full amount of what ever the bid is will go to this charity - Http://www.willowsmountain.org.uk I have listed this offer on facebook, twitter etc so i will keep you all updated on who is the highest bidder. So what course? We are offering a FloorSkills Level 2 LVT course. The course details can be found here - http://floorskills.co.uk/flooring-training-courses/lvt---luxury-vinyl-tile-level-2 The course dates are 14-16th July. BIDDING ENDS 31st March, payment within 7 days please. WHY THIS CHARITY ? One of our fellow floorlayers and a flooring forum members daughter is very ill. She has only just pulled through. Please read the story here - Hi everyone, I don't post on here often but thought I would share my events of last summer with fellow fitters... At the end of an extremely frantic June I had one last job in our busiest month, communal staircase in two blocks for one of the national house builders. With flats being handed over the next day I had no choice but to work late having had all manor of trades climbing over us all day.I finally got home around midnight, I left a couple of hours work for me and the lad in the morning knowing we'd get done before the new homeowners arrived. When I got home my missus was up with my 13mth old daughter who'd been a little poorly, off her food and a bit of a cough before but was now being sick and not even keeping water down. In spite of the hour I was concerned enough to ring nhs direct and ask their advice, and as I thought they would, they suggested taking her to a&e. My gf took her in at 1am with us both thinking she had a chest infection and that the hospital would get some fluids in her and have her home in no time. I was happy enough to go to work in the morning to finish off thinking the little one would be home before me. Just as I was finishing up my gf phoned to tell me to hurry up as Willow was being moved into high dependency, when I got to the hospital an hour later there was a team of about 15 surrounding her. They were trying desperately to get an iv line into her but she was by now so dehydrated her veins were collapsing, another hour or so later they decided to shave her head in an attempt to get in the veins in her head, with no success. All through this Willow was conscious and understandably distressed, the simple chest infection was now suspected to be septicaemia and we could tell from how concerned the doctors were that she was in trouble. Around lunch time they managed to get a line in, but she was having problems breathing, the decision was made to put her on a ventilator. We were sent out to get a coffee as it isn't a pleasant thing to witness. Our coffee was interrupted by the consultant who came to tell us that Willow was on a ventilator but her heart had stopped when she was given anaesthetic! The assumption was that she was so poorly the anaesthetic had pushed her over a cliff so to speak. A consultant was blue lighted down to Northampton from Leicester, he initially stabilised Willow and got pain meds in, along with fluids by going into her bones, he told us in no uncertain terms that she needed to be moved to Leicester intensive care unit if she was going to survive, but if she wasn't strong enough she may not even last the journey. Again we were asked to leave the hdu to allow them to work, a much needed ciggie and caffeine top up and we thought all was in hand. When I popped my head back in to hdu I saw my baby being given cpr, her heart had stopped again and they were in the process of inserting drains into her lungs. The fluids they were giving her were collecting in her lungs and drowning her, after I had been literally picked up from the floor they got her heart started again. It was a case of now or never, she had to be moved to Leicester. The consultant decided she would be better off at Glenfield Hospital in Leicester as the cardiac arrests may have caused kidney problems, Glenfield have an excellent dialysis set-up so he made the arrangements for her to go. We travelled up to be with her, assuming the worst was over, and were so relieved to see her on Picu, in an induced coma but still fighting. The following morning a consultant came to see us and said she was running tests, although the diagnosis had been septicaemia she said there was no evidence of this in the blood tests so she wanted to give Willow an echocardiograph. We were called in with the consultant and a senior cardiologist, they had found that Willows heart was only functioning at 1/5 of what it should be, her heart also showed signs of a condition called dilated cardiomyopathy. We were knocked sideways, two days earlier she had been at nursery, her usual cheeky self and then this, completely out of the blue. The days events were far from over though. That evening Willow crashed again, we found out afterwards that her heart stopped for 4 1/2 minutes. The consultant told us that without intervention she wouldn't last the night. They put willow on a life support system called ECMO, Glenfield being one of the very few hospitals to offer this and considered to be one of the best ecmo centres in the world. Ecmo is essentially an artificial heart and lung. We were told GOSH and the Freemans hospital had been made aware of Willow and that she would be monitored on Ecmo and if there was no improvement she would be moved with a view having a heart transplant. A week later and echoes were showing no improvement. We were told that her condition was actually myocarditis; a viral infection causing inflammation of the heart. Her immune system had fought the infection and attacked her heart in the process. The three cardiac arrests had also caused muscle damage. At this point a heart transplant was looking like her only hope. GOSH were advising Glenfield on bed availability and mentioned a similar case they had dealt with where a child had recovered full heart function after two weeks of Ecmo, the system giving the heart enough time to rest and recover. Glenfield decided Willow should stay on Ecmo as GOSH would do the same, and she was still very poorly and moving her could be extremely detrimental. Those weeks at her beside were the hardest of my life, she was pumped full of opiates, antibiotics, wires all over and two big tubes pumping blood in and out of her neck through the Ecmo and dialysis machines. Eventually we had a glimmer of light, an echo showed a marginal improvement in her heart function, not enough to say definitively she would get better but something to cling on to. Her next echo showed improvement again, against the odds she was fighting with all she had. Finally we had the news we were waiting for, her heart had recovered enough to come off Ecmo, although it is an amazing machine it has risks and her doctors were aware the blood thinners needed while on it could cause hemorrhaging at any time. A 4hr surgery took her off the ecmo machine but she was still on a ventilator and dialysis. For the first time in three weeks we were able to give our little girl a cuddle. Subsequent echos showed further improvement and she was taken off the ventilator and was breathing unaided. Homeward bound, or so we thought. Willow was moved onto a general Ward, conscious, going through cold-turkey but alive. Just 45 minutes later we had the next blow, Willows eyes started rolling in her head, we called a doctor in who suspected she was having a seizure. An emergency mri was done and we found out that Willow had had a massive stroke, presumably when her heart stopped for 4 minutes. That weekend she had over 25 seizures, the neurologists couldn't even tell us if she would have any brain damage and with her coming off of the opiates she was far from her normal self. Once the anti-epilepsy meds built up in her system the seizures stopped, a full week after she woke up we saw something we never thought we'd see again. A smile. Slight at first but with a little coaxing a full blown smile. Our little bubba was back! The last six months have seen us rebuilding our lives, back at work after a two month layoff, Willow eventually back in nursery, cheeky as ever and defying all of the doctors predictions to show almost no signs of her battle. We've been back and forth to hospital, only last week we were told that Willows heart was back to normal, her prognosis is good and we are now weaning her off some of the meds she's been on for six months. Without the ecmo machine I would've lost my little girl. Our story has made some of the national press, Google Willow Heart Attacks and something will come up, including our efforts to buy a new ecmo for Glenfield. In six months we've raised 9.5k of a 40k target for Heartlink Children's charity. They provide vial equipment to Glenfield as well as accommodation, tea, coffee, laundry facilities... I've jumped out of a plane, held a bootsale, made calendars and plainly begged. Not much I wouldn't do to try to repay Heartlink & y Glenfield hospital for giving me my little girl back. Www.Justgiving.com/willowsmountain Http://www.willowsmountain.org.uk So get bidding please, end date 31st MARCH
Hi guys, I posted in the Facebook group last night, I'd like to offer a small extra incentive to anyone wishing to bid; the current highest bid is £400, if the bid goes over £500 I will include 5 boxes (12.5m2) of Spacia bronze or steel, whichever the winner prefers, depending on where the winner is based I may be able to deliver or drop over to Floorskills when they're on the chosen course. I figure this could effectively cover a large slice of the winning bidders costs. Iain
