Sunday 31 January 2016

An Update from Gareth

My son Teddy was born December 11th and everything seemed fine. A few days later we were admitted to Stoke Manderville Hospital with a suspected chest infection. Three days later Teddy almost died and was rushed into theatre. We were basically told he was going to die and when two of the nurses left the room crying, well that will stay with me forever.  As it turns out he had a very rare heart condition that only around five children a year are born with. Amazingly they managed to get him to hang on.

Teddy was then retrieved by the specialist Southampton PICCU unit who cover the whole of the south. We then spent 27 days in intensive care with him as they tried to get him ready for an operation. It turned out Teddy has a small left ventricle in the heart, a long narrowing and a defective Aorta. His surgery had to be brought forward as he reversed his circulation and filled his lungs with blood. An amazing consultant and doctor spent 24 hours with him keeping him balanced and he had different pulses all over his body. We were given a twenty percent chance of him coming through the operation which again he amazingly did.

After that things improved and he moved from intensive care to the ward and then eventually to Oxford Hospital. Incredibly, seven weeks later he is now at home and recovering. He will never be ‘normal’ and will have to be monitored for the rest of his life but he is like a baby should be at least for now.

The point of all this ( aside from just telling someone about it), is that two charities very much helped us through this. The first was Ronald McDonald House who provide accommodation around the hospitals for parents of sick children. Without them we would have had a four hour round trip each day to Southampton or simply slept in the car park. They helped us again at Oxford to stop our 100 mile round trip each day. The second charity is the Friends of PICCU charity which raises money for the specialist children’s unit at Southampton

What I need from you guys is some kind of gaming related fund raising ideas. I’m probably not good enough to break any world records so I was thinking maybe something more endurance based like completing Final Fantasy VII in one sitting or completing a game from each game system (I have access to most retro stuff). I’m open to ideas.

A few ideas I've had some far include:

1. Playing awful games for a marathon.
2. Picking a system and say 100 games, every time you die you change game and see if you can last 24 hours ect.
3. Playing normal games with the bath mat (but that excludes a lot of retro systems).
4. some kind of Street Fighter marathon.