My daughter, a Perthes Disease Warrior

My daughter Greta, now 9, is recovering from a rare bone disease called Perthes Disease. It affects one in every 10,000 children (I had it as a child and spent months in hospital, followed by two and a half years on crutches) and now she too has spent the last three years living with the condition. Little is understood about the disease and the cause is still unknown - basically, the blood supply to the hip is temporarily cut off and the hip bone dies and crumbles away. She had an operation aged 6, the remaining hip bone is now growing normally and she is walking again.

Being the fighter that she is, she wants to climb the o2 in London for her chosen charity, the Perthes Kids Foundation, who do excellent work in making children with Perthes Disease feel a lot less isolated. I wish there was something like this back in the early 1990s, however I was an adult before I met someone else with the condition. Thankfully, she gets to go to a yearly camp for other Perthes survivors and wouldn’t have done so without the work that the charity do.

She would be grateful for any donations, however small, in support of her climb. Not least because I, a grown man who is scared of ladders, has to go up with her. Do not let the fact that she supports AFC Bournemouth like her mum deter you.

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Posted By: tim berry, Apr 30, 21:08:05