Swimmer Leanne takes on 10k challenge

Making a splash: Leanne Palmer (right) with Libbie Handley (middle) and her big sister Tialer

LEANNE Palmer is making a splash for a charity close to her heart. She’s been in training for six months to tackle a 10k swim — thats 400 lengths of the pool at Chadderton Wellbeing Centre — on Saturday.

Leanne is raising cash for the North-West and North Wales Transport Service (NWTS), which provides specialised children’s ambulances for transporting critically ill patients to one of two paediatric units in the two regions.

Leanne got the idea after the service cared for a friend’s three-year-old granddaughter, Libbie Handley, who became ill after catching chicken pox.

Leanne (33), from Chadderton, said: “She got so bad she was transferred from Tameside Hospital to the Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital. She deteriorated and was sent to Alder Hey Children’s Hospital, as they had the equipment to save her life.”

The specialised ambulance crew stayed with her throughout the day until she could be put on a specialist machine in an induced coma. Doctors diagnosed serious bacterial infection, which hits only one child in 30,000 — and which only four in 10,000 survive.

Leanne will have to swim for four hours, burning around 3,000 calories. So far in training, Leanne has swum for 73 hours, equivalent to 7,806 lengths or 122.2 miles!

She has raised £1,737 in sponsorship but she is looking for more before diving into the pool at 8am.

Sponsor her at: www.justgiving.com/leanne-palmer1.