I built this so my children
would know who I was

In 2017 I collapsed and started convulsing at the dinner table. I was taken to hospital by ambulance and when I arrived in A&E I was experiencing total heart block. The doctors said I was lucky to be alive.

I had a pacemaker fitted and they also found other issues with my heart, including a bicuspid aortic valve. Over the last eight years my heart has deteriorated. In 2025 I had major open heart surgery — they broke my sternum to replace my valve.

I've had more surgery this year, and I was told my heart is only functioning at 45%. I'm now under the heart failure team. I have many scars and I'll be on medication for the rest of my life.

But those things are easy to deal with.

What bothers me most, lying in the hospital bed before my surgeries, is realising how little my children would know and remember about me if I wasn't here anymore.

Not the big facts. The real stuff. My personality and what's important to me. What I was like as a kid, what scared me, what I enjoyed, what made me laugh. The small important details that make a person who they are — the ones nobody thinks to write down until it's too late.

It's called Tell Me Your Story. It's a simple app that asks thoughtful questions about a person's life — childhood, family, work, and the moments that shaped them — and turns the answers into a printed keepsake book.

My favourite feature is that you can record your voice answering each question, and a QR code gets printed in the book so your family can scan it and hear you tell the story in your own words.

I built it from scratch, by myself, around work and family life. Partly to help me deal with the emotional impact of having a lifelong medical condition, but mostly so my children would have something meaningful of me. They can hear for themselves, in my own words, how much I love and adore them — whenever they need it.

Every family has someone whose story deserves to be kept — partners, parents, grandparents, friends. Someone who sadly won't be here forever.

If that's someone in your life, I'd love for you to take a look. Don't let these memories and their precious voice disappear forever.