Area Contacts
Kerry Auger - East London/Essex
Hello, I am Kerry Auger and I am married to Paul and we have two beautiful children, Thomas 4 and Isobel born August 2007. We live in Rayleigh, Essex. I am currently the ECHO area contact for East London and Essex.
Thomas was diagnosed with Hypo Plastic left heart syndrome when I was just 20 weeks pregnant, a complete shock for us as we had just gone along for our routine 20 week scan. After being born Thomas had the first of the three stage Norwood, performed by David Anderson, and has since had all three stages and a few other smaller procedures. Currently Thomas is doing extremely well, we had our first holiday to Florida this year, 2007 and are looking forward to many more, he is also starting school in January 2008. Thomas leads a full life doing swimming, Tennis and loves being a big brother.
ECHO plays an important role for us and has done for the past 4 years, I would like to offer support, information or any advice to families who may need it, so please contact me.
I look forward to hopefully meeting some of you soon.
east.london.essex@echo-evelina.org.uk
Teresa Buchanan - Suffolk
Hi I'm Teresa Buchanan, I'm married to Wade and have two children, Alan who is 12 and Milly who is 8, Milly was born with multiple VSD's (holes in the heart) We live in Ipswich Suffolk, Milly was diagnosed with her heart problems when she was 8 weeks old, She had surgery at Guy's when she was 12 weeks old. It was the most frightening time of my life. While we were in hospital we had a visit form a lady who told us all about ECHO, and she gave us lots of support. After we had got over the shock of Milly's problems we went back to our every day routines, but I always felt that I owed something to ECHO after all the support they gave my husband and myself, So we became involved in fundraising and I wanted to be able to offer support to parents who were going through the same emotions as I went through, so that's when I decided to become an Area contact for the members in Suffolk.
So please if you ever have any worries and feel you want to speak to someone, please do get in touch; I'm always at the end of a phone line. It is nice to know that you are not going through these problems on your own.
suffolk@echo-evelina.org.uk
Jessica Cattermole - Sussex
I joined ECHO in December 2002, a few days after my daughter Isabel was born with Transposition of the Great Arteries.
During our stay in hospital I met members from ECHO, who were able to tell me of their own experience under similar circumstances and help me immensely. I have since received a huge amount of support and made many friends through ECHO.
I am very proud to work for ECHO as Administration Assistant. I am also Area Contact for Sussex, a role that I share with Rosie Wheldal.
If you need any information on upcoming events, would like to organise a coffee morning or have any fundraising ideas, would like to meet other members, buy ECHO merchandise or just want a chat, then please give me a call or drop me an email. I work Monday, Tuesday and Thursday but if you leave a message I will get back to you as soon as possible.
sussex@echo-evelina.org.uk