Heather, aged 12, writes about how Royal Brompton cared for her dad and what her and her sisters did to say 'thank you'.

The first time we heard that our Daddy required emergency heart surgery was when we woke up on a November morning, thinking of the school day ahead, and found our grandparents downstairs. Daddy had gone to hospital the night before, where they found that he had an aortic dissection. 

We went to school that day and came back to find the whole family there awaiting news of Daddy’s 10 hour heart surgery at Royal Brompton. Fortunately, it turned out to be a success, for which we can’t thank the surgical team enough.

When we first went to the hospital to see Daddy we were terrified. We had no clue what it was going to be like and how Daddy would be. But seeing all the smiling nurses and Daddy so happy to see us made us feel much better. In the end Daddy had three operations and spent six weeks on Alex ward. We visited lots of times and every time the nurses and doctors were really friendly to us. We enjoyed going for walks around the corridors to help Daddy get fitter and playing games with him on his bedside table. It was great to eventually get Daddy home, where we got to spend lots of time with him while he continued to recover.

We have a lot to thank Royal Brompton for, so we decided to do a yard sale to raise money for the hospital. We each picked some toys to sell and helped mummy and daddy to bake cakes and bread. We made lemonade from fresh lemons and picked some of the vegetables we had grown in our back garden.

We had fun designing and laminating signs about the sale and putting them up in the streets around our house. Mummy advertised the sale on the neighbourhood Facebook page and we told all our friends at school about it. Lots of people turned up and were very generous. Overall, we raised £200, which we hope will help Royal Brompton to make more sick people better.