Lara Curtis

Thank you everyone for your overwhelming support following Lara's accident. As you know I was originally told that Lara would not have any movement in her arms or legs. The situation now is much more positive and, following major neck surgery, she can move her arms and breathe unaided. She cannot as yet move her hands or legs but it is still early days. She is now at a specialist rehabilitation centre in Chicago and has been there for 2 weeks. We have all been out there with her but her siblings and I flew back at the weekend to get them all back to school/uni. I go back to the US on Thursday. Today in a therapy session she learnt how to type on her laptop so she sent me an email. This will be invaluable in helping her to keep in touch with her friends. You might now get some replies to your messages! She can leave the hospital for short periods of time in a wheelchair and is now eating normally. She is very determined and, we believe, she is in a very good rehabilitation institute. It will be a few months before we have a better idea of how much movement she will regain. We are likely to be in Chicago with her until December and then she will be treated as an outpatient and we don't yet know how this will work. Ideally she will return to school at some point during the winter/spring term and will probably take an extra year to complete her A2s.

If any of you are swimmers we are creating a 'Team Lara' to raise money for spinal cord research. The Aspire charity run an event where teams club together to swim the distance of the Channel (but in a swimming pool) over the 12 weeks from 8^th September. We are expanding it to try and get enough people to swim across the Atlantic. You can swim any number of lengths in any pool and you just let us know how many and when. We will keep a running total. Even a few lengths swum each week would really help. Instead of everyone getting individual sponsorship we thought we would ask for sponsorship for the total number of lengths swum by the team as a whole. If you might be able to help us, either by swimming or sponsoring us, please let me (liza.curtis@hpcplc.co.uk) know and I can send you more info. I am told we need 127,280 lengths (in a 25m pool) to be swum between September 8^th and December 1^st to get from Shannon in Ireland to Gander in Newfoundland, Canada. Lara's air ambulance stopped in both of these places to refuel on her way out to Chicago. Hopefully by the end of the challenge Lara might also be able to swim a length.

Thank you for thinking of Lara.

With best wishes

Liza