James was born with CDH, which in his case meant that a hole in his diaphragm had allowed his kidney to grow larger than normal and to move up into his chest, preventing his left lung from inflating. While the hernia was corrected by surgery at Great Ormond Street hospital when he was just 18 days old, James continues to experience a wide variety of issues commonly found in CDH survivors. One in particular, dyspraxia, means that James finds it difficult to peddle, steer and balance a bike, something that greatly upset him as he watched Chloe, his older sister, make the transition from trike to bike with stabilisers, to riding unassisted - a feat he was never able to match. Caroline and I, both keen cyclists, started investigating what options existed to allow James to experience the freedom that cycling offers, but found that the only suggestions were ungainly three-wheelers that looked more like bath-chairs than bicycles! Eventually we stumbled across a small company in Portsmouth, KMX Karts, that made cool-looking recumbent trikes (a recumbent is a bike where you sit very low down with the pedals out in front, rather than below you). Last year we were heading off to the Isle of Wight for a camping holiday and as we were sailing from Portsmouth it seemed the perfect opportunity to try James out on a KMX trike. I rang the company and explained the situation and they couldn't have been more understanding or helpful, and so it was that a few days later we found ourselves at an industrial unit on the outskirts of Portsmouth with an array of KMX karts for James (and Chloe, and even me!) to try out.
As you can probably guess from the picture above, James took to a KMX trike like a duck to water, even managing to topple one over and bash himself up a bit - at precisely the time Yvonne from KMX was telling us how safe a recumbent trike was! That incident to one side, and several lessons in how not to turn it over but perform wicked skids instead, James was sold and so were we. Sadly a full car meant we couldn't take away a trike there and then, despite James' eagerness to do so, but when we got back from holiday one arrived promptly and after some quick assembly, James was up and running on his own trike.
While this story has a happy ending, sadly it's not as clear cut as one would hope. Although James enjoys riding his trike, and the cool factor makes up for it being different, he still experiences problems commonly found in CDHers, which makes a lot of things just that bit more difficult for him than for either of his two sisters, and it is these problems and the need to understand them better that has led us to try and raise some money for CDH UK, to help fund research into both the causes of CDH and the many related conditions that affect those born with it.
If after reading this you would like to help support our cause, you can do so by donating at My Charity Page.
Thank you.
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