Thursday 26 March 2015

"Happy Days!'- Ceri Williams, Sully- 1970s

Every time 49 year old Ceri Williams* flies out of Cardiff airport she passes over Sully hospital, looks down and says to herself:
“Happy days!”

For Ceri was as a hole-in-the heart child patient there in the early 1970s.

She talks of her time at Sully with fond memories.

“I was very friendly with a boy called Kevin and we would run outside on to the beach in our pyjamas to collect crabs from the rock pools then we would carry them back and put them in the bath. The nurses would go spare.
Sometimes they could not find us to give us our treatment, or procedures, because we were out on the beach.”

She returned to Sully for regular check-ups throughout her childhood and adolescence.


Medicine moved on and at 24 years of age Ceri elected to have hole -in -the -heart surgery at Brompton hospital London.
“ This was very successful and it changed my life.”

Today she lives in Abercynon, between Merthyr and Cardiff, part of a close-knit family and community.


“ I asked about having children and I was advised against it. Now it’s too late,” she says.

 “ But I am happy, I have all my family and friends around me.  I have always lived in the valleys. I see no reason to move”.

*Ceri Williams nee Pritchard


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