SEND ME STUFF: JB, The Youth Guy

11 Greenfield Crescent Edgbaston

Birmingham B15 3AU

Phone: 0121 455 8982 Mobile: 07590 531153 email: jon@lhm.org.uk

Recipe

If you want this delicious cake to eat, then you will need…

Ingredients

4 tablespoons flour 4 tablespoons sugar 2 tablespoons cocoa 1 egg 3 tablespoons milk 3 tablespoons oil 3 tablespoons chocolate chips (optional) a small splash of vanilla ex-tract (optional) 1 large coffee mug

Method

♦ Add dry ingredients to mug, and mix well.

♦ Add the egg and mix thoroughly.

♦ Pour in the milk and oil and mix well.

Riddle me this...

I’ve started to get a few things sent in, which is great! Get involved and post or email me a joke, story, or review, and if it gets published I’ll send you something to say thanks!

Patron Baroness Howarth of Breckland OBE

A company limited by guarantee, registered in England and Wales, number 06442071, registered office 11 Greenfield Crescent, Edgbaston, Birmingham, West Midlands, B15 3AU

Registered charity number 1123290

YOUR SHOUTYOUR SHOUTYOUR SHOUTYOUR SHOUT

Can you crack these ten tricky riddles? 1. What goes up and down stairs

without moving?

2. Give it food and it will live; give it water and it will die?

3. What can you catch but not throw?

4. I run, yet I have no legs. What am I?

5. Take one out and scratch my head, I am now black but once was red.

6. What goes around the world and stays in a corner?

7. What gets wetter the more it dries?

8. I am full of holes, yet I still hold water, what am I?

9. The more there is, the less you see?

10. They come at night without being called and are lost in the day with-out being stolen. What are they?

Need the answers? Email jon@lhm.org.uk with “Riddle” in the subject line and it’ll be sent right along to you. Or text 07590 531153 with the word riddle and the question number (eg Riddle4). Usual text rate, ask bill payer please!

Look good? Kev told you about this at the Open Day, and loads of you said you wanted the recipe, so here it is!

♦ Add the chocolate chips (if using) and vanilla extract, and mix again.

♦ Put your mug in the microwave and cook for 3 minutes at 1000 watts (high).

♦ The cake will rise over the top of the mug, but don't be alarmed!

♦ Allow to cool a little, and tip out onto a plate.

♦ You can add a dollop of ice cream if you like, too!

There you have it. You are now only ever 5 minutes away from a delicious chocolate cake!

Bon Apetit

NEWSFLASH!

What happened @ LHM last month...

♦ Well, as you can see, we had our Open Day. I think it was a big success, and I hope that more of you will be able to make our next Youth Event

♦ The new main LHM website went up! Deb and Gwen spent AGES making sure that it was just right. Check it out at www.lhm.org.uk

♦ Half of the Youth Council met and gave our Chief Exec, Suzie, a real grilling. They asked questions like “Can the young mem-bers have a say in the really important deci-sions?” and “What has LHM got planned to help the siblings?”

♦ We had some more meetings about our research question-naire. When it is ready, I would love for as many of you to get involved as possible!

♦ I found a new charity called ‘Over The Wall’ that does camps for any kid with a heart condition, more next month!

March/April 2009 Issue 4

OPEN DAY 2009

Young members of LHM are joined by Alex Bicknell (far left) and Caroline Duffy (far right), both grown ups with a heart condition, who joined the team to share advice and get stuck in with the sport and drama

I think that the Open Days are my favourite bit of my job. Actually, any time that I get to spend with any of you lot is ace. I love being able to mess about for a weekend.

I know that a lot of you couldn’t make this last Open Day, because it was too far to travel, so we will do our best to make sure that next time we can have one a bit closer to where you are.

Obviously we can’t get it right every time, but we’ll do our

best. I want to meet as many of you as I can, and I’d love for you all to have the chance to chat to each other.

In case you weren’t at our Open Day on the 15th March, I thought you might like to know what we did.

We had a talk from GUCH, which is a charity for Grown Ups with Congenital Hearts.

They help adults with poorly hearts, just like we help children with heart conditions.

We also talked about transition, which is a long posh word, but all it means is change. We talked about the transition (or change) from your child doctor to your adult doctor, and how we can make this easier, and less scary!

We also did a quick talk on the research I keep batting on about, and lots of footy and drama, which was loads of fun.

If you have any questions on any of these things (transition, GUCH, footy) you can email me of ring me!

So this is a perfectly healthy, normal heart.

Your heart has two main jobs:

1. It pumps blood full of lovely oxygen to your brain and your body

2. It pumps blood without any oxygen to your lungs, where it can get the lovely oxygen!

The ‘ventricles’ (big word, but it just means chambers or compartment) are the two big bags at the bottom of the heart. They are strong and pump the blood. The right ventricle pumps the blue blood to the lungs. The left ventri-cle pumps the red blood to the body.

Sometimes hearts don’t come out like this though. Sometimes they come out different.

Check out January’s newsletter to recap on how a normal heart works, and what the heart’s job is. Then have a look at how a Hypoplastic Left Heart is different. Think

about what the problems with a Hypoplastic left heart could be?

Hypoplastic means ‘small’ or underdeveloped

There are usually FOUR big differ-ences between a Hypoplastic Left

Heart and a normal heart

1 There is a hole between

the left and the right collecting

chambers (atriums).

The posh name for this is a

Atrial Septal Defect.

2 The left pumping chamber (ventricle) is very small and hasn't developed very well. This means that is not strong enough to

pump red (oxygenated) blood to the body and the brain.

3 Valves are like lit-tle doors in the

heart. They only open one

way though, this stops blood going

the wrong way through the heart. The valves on the left hand side of

the heart will usu-ally be blocked.

4 The Aorta is the tube (or blood vessel)

which carries red (oxygenated) blood

to the body and brain.

Because the left pumping chamber doesn’t work, the

aorta is very small and thin.

Stage 1

Stage 2

This surgery is normally done when you are only a few days old. The surgeon does three things to make sure that blood with oxygen (red blood) can get around the body, and to the brain!

The hole between the left and right collecting chambers (atriums) is made bigger so that more red (oxygenated)

blood can get into the right side of the heart, where it can be pumped around the body by the right ventricle.

The bottom (or trunk) of the ‘pulmonary artery’ (look back to the normal heart picture) is attached to the ‘aorta’. This makes the aorta bigger, and means more blood can get to the body

A small tube connects the aorta to the pulmonary artery, which means used blood can get to the lungs to get oxygen. This tube is called a ‘shunt’.

For some of you, this is the first part of the Fontan operation, and is normally done when you are aged

between 3 months and 9 months.

After this surgery, any blue blood coming from the head and the neck goes straight into the lungs, where it can

get some oxygen.

The surgeon cuts the ‘vena cava’, and sews it to the ‘pulmonary artery’. The pulmonary artery takes the blue blood straight to the lungs, so it can get oxygen and turn

into red blood.

So what do the surgeons do? Good question! Single ventricle (this means one pump) heart

conditions like Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome are non-correctable. This means, unfortunately,

there are no procedures or operations that can turn a Hypoplastic Heart into a normal hearts like the

one on the opposite page. BUT, what they can do, is redirect the blood, so that the red (oxygenated) blood is being pumped to the

body by the hearts one working pump: the right ventricle. This is called ‘palliative’ surgery.

Follow the steps and see if you understand how the surgeon re-directs the blood through the heart, so that it can be pumped by the right ventricle to the

body and the brain.

This is pretty tough stuff!

If you are struggling, why don’t you ask your parents to walk you through it.

It is much easier to learn when somebody is showing you!

Next month….right-sided conditions and the Fontan operation!