James Boxing Day Walk

We are organising a walk on boxing day at Inch Wildfowl Reserve, Burt to help raise funds for Letterkenny Children's Ward, Temple Street Children's Hospital and Hugh's House. These 3 organisations were tremendous and instrumental on helping our wee baby boy James to his recovery. On Monday the 9th Sept at only 18 days old James was rushed from our own doctors surgery in Newtowncunningham to Letterkenny hospital by ambulance with suspected meningitis. It was all a blur but thankfully our local doctor gave James the antibiotic on arrival that potentially saved his life. We will be eternally grateful to them for that. James was treated in Letterkenny for the next few hours until it was said that he would need to be transferred to Dublin. We travelled the long journey during the night to Temple Street. When we arrived we were told James was a very sick boy and that the next 48hours were critical. At that stage we were still waiting on bloods to find out exactly what was wrong with James but on Wednesday it was confirmed every parents worst nightmare that James had contracted Strep B Meningitis and Sepsis.. Thankfully after a few days his wee body started to accept the antibiotics and that was the start of his road to recovery. He was put on a course of antibiotics for 3 weeks and still got round the clock monitoring from doctors and nurses. Thankfully after three weeks the infection had cleared up. We were told he has suffered brain damage from the meningitis but so far he is showing all positive signs.

Hughs House was a saviour to us as a family when were in Dublin as we were offered free accommodation which just was like a home from home and so close to the hospital.  
We want to hold this walk and raise much needed funds for these three amazing organisations that certainly saved our sons life. We would also like to thank everyone for all their thoughts and prayers that really helped us through this tough journey.

The walk will take place at Inch Wildfowl Reserve, Burt on Thursday the 26th December at 11.30am starting at the Pumphouse Carpark. Let's make this a great fun morning between family and friends and support these amazing charities. 

Kind Regards
Gareth, Ciara and James Pearse