Heart Awareness Week Charity Drive

Beads Around a Christmas Tree

At Westmead Children's Hospital's cardiac ward, there is a program called Heart Beads. Every time a child has a procedure — a blood test, an IV line, a surgery — they get a bead. A small reminder to hold, to remind them of what their body has been through.

Most kids leave with a bracelet. Maybe a necklace.

I have four full bags. Enough beads to wrap around a Christmas tree.

This week, I shared my story with the Ascham community. It started on day four of my life, when I was rushed to Westmead with two holes in my heart, a narrowed aorta, and a faulty valve. Since then, I've had fourteen surgeries, most of them open-heart. When I was two, my heart stopped for eight minutes, and my parents were told I might not wake up the same. I had to learn to walk and talk all over again.

I'm not telling you this to feel sorry for me. I'm one of the lucky ones, and I really do know that. I'm telling you because behind every bead is a kid. Behind every kid is an anxious family praying that their kid will be lucky too. And behind every story like mine, there are hardworking doctors, nurses, and generous people who chose to give — even when they didn't have to.

The Sydney Children's Hospital Foundation helps more than 150,000 sick children every year. Over 60,000 of them are seriously ill. That's around 400 children every single day who need care beyond what hospital resources can provide.

The surgery that saved my life is called a Ross-Konno. It was only invented in the mid-1990s. If I'd been born a little earlier, or somewhere else, I might not be here writing this.

When you donate to the Foundation, you're not just helping in a general way. You're helping pay for the bead a child will hold one day and think, I made it through that.

Every year I do a charity walk called Two Feet and a Heartbeat, and I've raised thousands of dollars for heart disease. I also volunteer as an examination patient for trainee doctors, because if my story helps even one of them be ready when a kid like me comes through the door, then something good has come from all of it. I do these things because I know what it feels like to be the child on the other end of someone else's kindness.

Today, I'm asking if you'll be that kindness for someone else.

You don't need to have lived a story like mine to care about it. You just need to believe that every child deserves the chance to grow up, go to school, and stand in front of a room one day and say: here I am.

Please think about donating to the Sydney Children's Hospital Foundation.

Whatever you can give matters — truly, it does — to a child somewhere who is counting beads and hoping.

We are raising funds for Sydney Children's Hospitals Foundation!

Join us and help raise money to support an amazing organisation.

Sydney Children’s Hospitals Foundation supports Australia's leading paediatric health services, offering a safe and friendly healing environment for children from NSW and beyond. Every dollar we raise contributes to keeping our hospitals running at a world class, award-winning level.

That’s why I’ve chosen to raise much needed funds for the Sydney Children's Hospitals Foundation. Thank you for your support!