Graham Muir to take on Great Scottish Run for CDH UK

Graham Muir’s son Louis was born around the same time as his friends Ross and Carla Lundy had a baby boy, Dawson.

But Dawson was born with a very rare condition, called congenital diaphragmatic hernia, or CDH, and from birth was fighting for his life.

Doctors at the Royal Hospital for Children in Glasgow once described Dawson as “the sickest baby in Scotland” as he fought for his life from birth.

Carla described what she and her husband, who both hail from the Three Towns, and Dawson himself - now aged six - went through at that time, to our sister paper The Glasgow Times.

She said: “When Dawson was born, he was taken away from us immediately, and we didn’t get to see him for hours.

Dawson with his South Beach deckchair

“When we did finally see him, he was in intensive care. After that, we just went from hour to hour, waiting for the doctors to give us news, knowing that anything could change at any minute.

“The next day he was baptised and given the last rites. It was touch and go.”

With his situation changing from day to day, the couple were given a room in Ronald McDonald House, which provides free accommodation to families whose child is being treated at the hospital next door, allowing parents and siblings to stay close to children who are critically ill in hospital.

Altogether, the couple spent 100 nights in the house.

Slowly but surely, Dawson began to get better, to the point he was eventually well enough to get home. The young family still had other trips back to hospital, but now, Dawson is a fit and fun-loving young boy.

He now even has his very own deckchair at Ardrossan beach, as a lasting sign of what a fighter he is.

Now Graham Muir, a close friend of the family and former teammate of Ross’s at Largs Thistle FC, wants to help raise awareness of the illness that affected Dawson’s life so much.

He will be taking on the Glasgow half marathon as part of the Great Scottish Run on Sunday, October 2, raising money for CDH UK in the process.

Also a keen darts player, ‘Yaya Muiry’, as he is often known, will also be raising money through the Kilwinning Darts Premier League.

They will be hosting a fund-raising night themselves, and have Graham’s half marathon fundraiser up on the wall at their home in the Blacklands Bowling Club in Kilwinning.

With a little more than a month to go, Graham, a well-known junior footballer who hung up his boots last season, says he knows he’ll need to work hard to complete the challenge in a good time.