My goodness, a lot has been going on. I’m pleased to say that no-one burnt their feet at our first ever Fire Walking Challenge last week.


I was too frightened to look, let alone take part, but our wonderful fire walkers took a deep breath and raised over £6,000 towards the extension to Harefield Hospital’s Intensive Care Unit. Since our generous donors are helping us build this state-of-the-art facility brick by brick, this one event alone contributes 120 bricks – quite a sizeable chunk of wall.

Thanks to all of you who have sponsored bricks already. We have had a bit of a nightmare getting this through the planning process and then liaising with tenders, but we have now crossed the final hurdle and soon these bricks will transform from being virtual to becoming very real. To find out more about how you can help us in our ambition, please click here.

We really like to involve our donors and supporters in our work, and one fantastic way of doing this is by showing them behind the scenes at out fantastic hospitals. This Thursday (6 October) we are giving donors a tour around Royal Brompton’s Genetics and Genomics Laboratory – somewhere most definitely not on the beaten track – and our guests will hear all about the extraordinary diagnostic work that goes on there. Dr Deborah Morris-Rosendahl will give a presentation about the mind-boggling world of DNA and one of our clinical geneticists will be extracting DNA from fruit to help explain further!

There will also be demonstrations of the SPRinT programme, which is something Royal Brompton is incredibly proud of, and rightfully so – it is internationally renowned and award-winning. Places for our tour are very limited but we do have just a few spaces, so if you would like to come and join us at 6pm on Thursday, and find out more about our world (and perhaps help us with our campaign), please do let me know by emailing [email protected] and we will try our best to squeeze you in.