3 May 2024
Little Bonnie’s Inspiring Journey
This Sunday 5th May, colleagues across Business Services Organisation will be running in the Belfast City Marathon … one of the teams competing will be doing it for a little girl called Bonnie.
Little Bonnie was born in July 2023 with a hole in her heart, and to make matters more challenging for her, she was then diagnosed with Tetralogy of Fallot (a congenital heart defect). This meant that Bonnie spent five of her first twenty weeks in the Clarke Clinic at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast Health and Social Care Trust.
At such a young age Bonnie has had a massive journey to travel, not least needing to be a minimum of 11lbs before she could have surgery, this was even more challenging as she had to be fed via a tube in her nose. For any parent of a newborn, feeding a baby is hard enough, imagine trying to feed your baby through their nose, and all the complications this creates.
To be fair to Bonnie, she is clearly a little fighter and got herself up to 15lbs and headed off to Our Lady’s Childrens Hospital in Crumlin, Dublin, for her surgery on Friday 5th April.
One month on nearly to the day, she is recovering well, full of smiles and giggles, and a wonderful of example of how our Health Services and Charites work brilliantly in partnership.
Inspired by Bonnie and her parents (Bonnie’s Dad, Mark Lewis works for BSO) , a team from the BSO Directorate of Strategic Planning and Customer Engagement, including Mark, will run on Sunday to raise money for one of the significant supporters in Bonnie’s journey, the Children’s Heartbeat Trust.
Whilst in hospital, the Children’s Heartbeat Trust provided a huge amount of support for Bonnies parents, including a bedroom to stay in, that was based within RVH which allowed a space for rest…and be always close to her.
The Charity is reliant on voluntary support so please if you can take a moment to support them and help the next little Bonnie and their parents.
Bonnie’s Dad, Mark…“We cannot thank everyone enough who have helped us all, Belfast Trust Childrens’ Hospital, all the team in Our Lady’s Hospital in Dublin, and of course the team in the Children’s Heartbeat Trust who were on hand to help two extremely emotional and exhausted parents. We are running for Bonnie and for them, their support was invaluable”.
To donate please follow this link and add what you can : JustGiving – Mark Lewis
On behalf of Little Bonnie, thank you for reading this and hopefully she has inspired you to support.
