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.