On Monday 24th August, life took a very unexpected turn when my younger brother, Drew, died suddenly. He had been a healthy 23 year old lad who had recently lost a fair amount of weight and who loved to go on long bike rides 3/4 times a week. It was very confusing as to why Drew had died.
After the postmortem, we found that Drew had died from an undiagnosed heart condition where his body cannot filter cholesterol properly. We were told he had an extremely aged heart for his young age. This obviously left us more confused in some ways as he’d never had any health problems. Because of this diagnosis, myself and my other two brothers had to have tests to find out whether we also had any undiagnosed heart conditions. Luckily, the tests came back showing we didn’t have the same condition.
I honestly feel that we were the lucky ones as we were allowed the tests free on the NHS because of our brother’s condition but not everyone is so lucky. After a little research, I found out that CRY performed these tests free of charge for any young person. To me this is something that needs to be supported so that hopefully fewer young people die in such horrible, unexpected circumstances.
This is why I decided to fundraise. After Drew died I’d decided to get more active and started the couch to 5k app. This then progressed into further distances and I decided to sign up for the Yorkshire 10k series and somehow, I managed to complete these.
Catherine Hirst
