This is Summer’s Story.
At the beginning of the season, Hastings United Football Academy chose Summer Finaly as their charity partner. Summer is in need of a specialised bed to help her transfer into and out of bed herself and to assist her parents with night time catheter changes, as well as assisting with a safe and comfortable nights sleep. The cost of the bed is £5500 and today we have the pleasure of being able to present Summer and her family with a cheque for the whole amount. This money has been raised by events i.e, golf days, sponsored walks and charity evenings organised by Joanne Nesbit, our fundraising and events co-ordinator & Academy Directors.
Summer was born on April 4th 2012. 21 weeks into pregnancy we were told the fetus had spinal and brain abnormalities. This was diagnosed as Spina Bifida which at the time was just a term we knew nothing about.
Summer was born at 11am on the 4 April 2012 weighing 6lb 10oz by elective caesarean at Kings College Hospital. We got shown our baby and she was whisked straight off to surgery just minutes old. She had a hole in her spine and all her nerves were exposed in a sac of fluid outside of the body. Her nerves had pulled on the back of her brain which was causing too much fluid to be produced on her brain.
On top of all of this Summer was only born with one kidney and has to take an antibiotic every day to prevent that kidney getting an infection. Her Bladder muscles are working too hard and she has to be catheterised 5 times a day to relieve the pressure on her bladder wall. She has to take a medicine daily to reduce the pressure and has regular operations to inject her bladder with botox just to stop damage to her bladder. She has had problems with emptying her bowels and would regularly get constipated. Until, she stopped eating and would throw up when she did try. Doctors decided to take action and we now have to washout her bowels every other day just to keep her regular and stop her getting backed up.
Summer takes all this in her stride and deals with every problem she comes across. She has progressed very well and is very advanced mentally and surprises every doctor we see with her speech and understanding of the world around her. Summer is now in Mainstream Primary School and has settled in very well and is advancing way ahead of all her milestones.
I would like to thank everyone who has supported this worth cause.
Dean White
Director of Football
Hastings United FC