Four month old Sabrina Blencowe was taken ill with bronchiolitis. Her father Martin tells her story…
Martin and Lucinda Blencowe were inspired to begin fundraising for The Royal Alexandra Children’s Hospital (the Alex) after their four-month-old daughter Sabrina contracted a serious case of viral bronchiolitis in January 2014. Here, Sabrina’s father, Martin, tells their story…
“Our fraternal twins, Sabrina and Savannah, were born six weeks premature and spent several days in Neonatal Intensive Care Unit until they were strong enough to come home. It was a heart breaking and anxious time for us as new parents to witness our little girls on life support machines. When we could finally hold them in our arms, our only wish was that they would be strong and healthy children without the need for any further medical attention from that day forward.
Sadly our worst fears were realized all too soon when Sabrina started experiencing respiratory distress. Although serious complications are rare with bronchiolitis, she became one of the 3% of children that require hospitalization. As a premature baby, the risk of serious complications was even greater.
We quickly found ourselves in the High Dependency Unit of The Royal Alexandra Children’s Hospital and Sabrina was sedated and fitted with an IV, feeding tube and a ventilator. No parent ever wants to experience the heartache of having a child in pain or distress. But when our Sabrina needed help – we couldn’t have hoped for better care than that we experienced at the Alex.
We are deeply thankful for the tremendous doctors and nurses in the HDU that saw our little girl through the worst hours of her illness and brought her back to good health. We made a promise to do whatever we can to raise awareness for all their stellar work and fundraise for more life-saving state-of-the-art equipment.
Along with Rockinghorse, we have launched a campaign called Sabrina’s Wish to raise funds for brand new critical care ventilators for HDU. We hope the initiative will be the start of a long lasting legacy that will go on to help many children on the HDU that may find themselves in Sabrina’s situation in the years to come.”