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Harriet had been experiencing episodes of erratic breathing during the day and had to be given a special ventolin nebulizer, to open up her airways and help stabilize her breathing. The nebulizers only seemed to give Harriet relief from her symptoms for short periods of time and her respiratory condition seemed to be getting worse as the day progressed.

In the early hours of last Tuesday morning, Harriet was rushed to the Derby Royal hospital in respiratory distress, her condition had become dangerous and she was now fighting for her life.

The hospital’s emergency team were on hand very quickly and spent several hours getting Harriet`s breathing stabilized, before she was transferred onto the dolphin intensive care unit.

Harriet was still in respiratory distress all day Tuesday, but then showed some signs of improvement and was released from the ward Wednesday night.

Harriet had been referred to Dr.Broderick at the Derby Children’s Hospital, for Botulinum injections to help relax the muscles in her right leg.

We initially had a consultation with Dr.Broderick last Thursday, she had a good look at Harriet and thought that the Botulinum injection would be beneficial and hopefully relax the muscles in Harriet`s right leg.

Dr. Broderick went over Harriet`s medical records to check for chest infections and anything that would cause concern, but was happy for Harriet to have the injection in her next clinic. There were some risks associated with the Botulinum injection that could potentially cause problems with a patient’s chest muscles and therefore given Harriet`s complex neurological condition it was decided that a lower dose would be given.

Dr.Broderick explained that we would normally have to wait a month for the injection, but had a clinic the following day and could give Harriet the Botulinum injection, if this is what we wanted to do.

On Saturday 14^th January 2012, seventeen volunteers made up of family and friends, descended on Derby County football stadium, in aid of a collection for the Help Harriet Trust.

We arrived at the football stadium just before 1pm and had a group photo, before we decided where everyone was going to be positioned around the outside of the football stadium.

As the fans from both Derby county and Coventry city started to arrive, we began our collection, some of us had done this before and knew what to expect, where as others were a little apprehensive.

Alot of people from Derby had read about Harriet in the Derby Evening Telegraph or were linked to Harriet`s Facebook group and regularly followed her progress, but there were also quite a few people that had not heard about Harriet.

We had been under the umbrella of the Queens Medical Centre Hospital in Nottingham for more than 2 years, Harriet`s complex neurological needs meant that most of the people we saw were from this hospital as they specialised in neurological brain disorders and other specialist areas.

When we last saw Harriet`s neurologist, Dr. William Whitehouse at the end of November 2011, he advised us that we needed more support for Harriet in our local Derby hospital and explained that more people needed to understand Harriet`s complex medical needs.

Harriet was rushed into the Derby Royal Hospital towards the middle of December 2011, with respiratory distress and had to be admitted to the Children`s Dolphin Intensive care unit for a few days. Dr. Bowker was one of the consultant doctors that looked after Harriet during her stay on Dolphin ward and said that he would be more than happy to take Harriet as one of his patients with the Derby Hospital. We received a letter a few weeks later asking us to attend a clinic at the Derby Children`s Hospital on January 13^th 2012.

While Harriet`s room was being built, we contacted several children`s charities that helped severely disabled children like Harriet, in the hope that we may get some much needed funding for some sensory equipment.

After a few months we had some good news from the Lifeline4kids charity, they had awarded Harriet an amazing £1000, to spend on sensory equipment for Harriet`s bedroom and garden area. The charity said that they would pay for the items directly and that we simply needed to send them a list of all the sensory items we required.