Region rallies behind Charley

FUNDRAISING efforts are in full flow to support a Lochmaben teenager who has been hospitalised with heart failure.

Charley Waugh, 13, faces spending the summer in the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Glasgow after he was rushed there a few weeks ago.

His family have dropped everything and decamped to the city to be there too, with his worried mum Laura Jermy also juggling caring for a newborn baby and a toddler.

Her mother, Elizabeth Jermy, has set up a gofundme page to try and help cover all their costs, including accommodation and food.

They have not yet been able to get a place at the Ronald McDonald accommodation near the hospital, so are trying to find a private short-term rental.

The crowdfunder had yesterday reached £7280 and Charley’s school, Lockerbie Academy, raised more money this week with a non-uniform donation day.

But the family have estimated it could cost them at least £15,000 for the rest of the stay, with Laura’s partner Dean Robson trying to keep their business going, and Charley’s dad, Richard Waugh, also travelling regularly from Brampton.

Elizabeth, from Chapelknowe, said: “Everyone has been so kind. It has made us very emotional.”

Offering an update, she revealed Charley is going to be put on the heart transplant list due to damage and scarring, but doctors say ‘he’s a long way off that’.

She added: “He is improving slowly and has been

moved from intensive care to high dependency.

“The doctors have told us he is still very poorly. The positives are he is off the critical list.”

When Charley originally got ill last month everyone thought it was a flare up of his Crohn’s Disease, with which he’s suffered for a few years, or acid reflux.

The hospital consultant at Dumfries agreed that was most likely, but things changed a couple of days later when Charley was complaining of pain in the chest and his heart rate shot up to 228 bpm.

After a few hours in intensive care at DGRI, the youngster was blue-lighted to Glasgow in an ambulance with two cardiologists.

Said Elizabeth: “He is very young for this. The doctors are baffled, they do not know why it’s happened. They have never come across a patient with such severe Crohn’s and heart failure at same time.”

For the first three weeks, the schoolboy was not allowed out of bed and could not eat as both actions affected his heart rate and he had an erratic rhythm.

However, he’s slowly starting to improve.

His relieved granny said: “Last week he made leaps and bounds and was able to get out bed and sit in chair.

“He will always be on the heart transplant list now- but we hope he will never need it.

* To send a donation, go to www.gofundme.com/f/charley-mva96?