Surrey fast bowler MATT DUNN on his campaign to raise money for research on rare form of epilepsy

Matt Dunn will never forget the day he returned to the Oval dressing room to discover the news that would change his life and those of his young family forever.

‘I came off the cricket field to find 20 missed calls from my wife,’ says the Surrey fast bowler. ‘She’d been doing her daily shop and in the middle of a supermarket our daughter Florence just went into an aggressive seizure.

‘I headed straight to St Peter’s Hospital near where we lived in Chertsey where she had been put into an induced coma. We were then transferred to a specialised recovery centre in London and the neurologist did a genetic profile. That’s when alarm bells started to ring.’

Three months of tests and more seizures later and the results for a couple blessed with a beautiful 11-month-old daughter who had joined elder son Freddie were stark.

‘Our paediatrician gave us the diagnosis and mapped out exactly what could happen to Florence,’ says Dunn. ‘There was no cure. There were no real medicines available then that would make things better. It was easy to think there was no hope.’

Matt Dunn has detailed the heartbreaking story of his daughter’s death earlier this year

The diagnosis was Dravet Syndrome, a rare form of epilepsy that affects one in every 15,000 people in the UK. 

Nothing would ever be the same again for a former England Under 19s and Lions bowler who had been living the dream with his boyhood county.

‘Everything for us as a family up until that point was perfect,’ Dunn, 30, tells Mail Sport.

‘My wife and I both had dream careers and we had a boy and then a girl. Sometimes we’d joke about something going wrong because everything had gone so right for us.

‘But within ten minutes this whole plan of the life we hoped was ahead for our children was just completely ripped away and that was difficult to come to terms with.

‘That day I went on to play in a T20 game here at the Oval and I was just numb. I hadn’t mentioned anything to anyone at that stage and I remember being out on the boundary in front of a packed crowd but I can’t recall anything from that game.

‘I don’t even really know why I played but I didn’t know what else to do. 

‘I was trying to process at that point what the rest of her life would turn out to be.’

Florence died in March after being diagnosed with Dravet Syndrome, a rare form of epilepsy

The rest of Florence’s life turned out to be heartbreakingly brief and she died in March of sudden unexpected death due to epilepsy at home near Milton Keynes, where Jessica and Matt Dunn now live, four months short of her third birthday.

Now, movingly and with incredible bravery and dignity, Dunn is telling his story for the first time as he prepares to join in a nationwide effort to raise money and awareness to combat a condition that can kill one in five children suffering from it before the age of 10.

‘We didn’t know how long we’d got with Florence so we wanted her to live as much as she could,’ says Dunn. 

‘And she wanted to live life. She loved being out doing everything and that was one of the hardest things. 

‘All she wanted to do was go outdoors and explore but couldn’t for most of her life because if she did there was the risk of a seizure.

‘As much as we try to come to terms with the journey we’ve been on and piece through it the one thing we can say is we gave everything we could while she was here and every weekend we’d try to do something even if it was just going to the farm.

‘We have so many amazing memories. 

‘As much as we did live in fear we’re happy because we did make those memories and when we look back now we almost eradicate all the bad things and all we can think of are the huge smiles and how much Florence enjoyed everything she did.

30-year-old revealed cricket has taken a backseat in his life ever since his daughter’s diagnosis

‘That fills us with a lot of peace because we know while she was here she had the best life she could have. That’s a huge comfort. It’s hard to look back now and remember we couldn’t win. My wife thinks ‘what could we have done differently?’ but there was nothing.

‘In so many things in life you can work harder and get more successful. And if you have self-belief and determination there are a lot of things you can fix. But the crippling thing for us is we could not do anything else. There was nothing we could do to fix her.’

Cricket, understandably, had to take a back seat and Dunn’s appearances as a genuinely quick bowler over the last couple of years have been sporadic. 

‘It has been very hard for me to put my mind fully into what I was doing and I can’t thank Surrey enough because the support they showed us throughout this and what they’re continuing to do now is more than I could ever have asked,’ says Dunn.

‘I will be eternally grateful to them and whatever happens in my career now is almost irrelevant because the love and the care I’ve had from this club is second to none and I’ll always relish that. 

‘That support took so much pressure off us dealing with Florence’s condition and the reality is if I’d been in the same position at the end of this season I’d have had to quit cricket because it was not sustainable.

‘With sport you have to be consistent, you have to be present and you have to live the lifestyle and I could not do that. 

‘It was getting to the stage where I wasn’t fit because I couldn’t commit. I’d do two weeks of training but then I’d spend four nights in hospital.

Dunn pictured here with daughter Florence on his shoulders on a day out last September

‘I was losing my love for the job and all I wanted to do was support Florence and we were going to have to really look into that as this season went on to try to find a way of dealing with it. But Surrey were brilliant and took all the pressure off me.

‘I thought ‘I’m still paid to do a job here and I should be turning up’ but I couldn’t do that while Florence’s life was at risk and that was an impossible place to live.

‘I see it with so many of the families living with it now. All control of your life is gone.’

The end of Florence’s courageous fight against the odds came suddenly. ‘It was completely out of the blue,’ says Dunn of the night he lost his daughter.

‘Florence’s life from one to two was pretty horrific and we were in hospital what felt like every week.

‘But we’d got through that and with new rescue medication the last eight months had been so much better and we were very much looking to put her back in pre-school. 

‘There was so much hope at that stage but that’s the reality of SUDEP.

‘We put her to bed one night and we woke up and she was no longer with us. We were told that could happen but then for that to become reality was a huge shock.

Dunn and his wife Jessica (left) have been married for three-and-a-half years

‘We tried to look at the peace of it and thought maybe Florence felt ‘I’ve had my time.’

‘She was about to turn three and that’s when the condition can really take hold of the child. So we felt maybe she thought ‘I’ve had my fun, I’m off now’.

‘When we planned the funeral I thought ‘I’ve got to speak’ because of the resilience and inner strength she always showed. I owed it to her to do it. 

‘And that’s the journey I find myself going on now. To relive that. 

‘And with the connection I have I feel it’s my duty to the families who live with this syndrome to carry on and for Florence because of all the suffering she went through in such a short space of time.’

To that end Matt and Jessica together with his wife’s two sisters will on Monday take part at Hyde Park.

That will mark the first day of what has become the annual ‘Every day for Dravet’ challenge that will see the Dunn family run, walk or cycle five kilometres every day in May.

Surrey are fully behind their efforts and have designated their Championship match against Middlesex that starts on May 11 a tribute to Florence, with Matt and Jessica running from Lord’s to the Oval on the first morning of the game.

Former England youth international received support for his cause from his former teammates

‘There is so much exciting research into potential cures and gene therapy that can massively reduce the amount of seizures children can have,’ says Dunn. 

‘There are some children having more than a hundred seizures a day and are literally not able to do anything about it and it’s trying to break those barriers to see if those kids can get any kind of respite and quality of life which is the biggest drive to keep pushing forward.

‘Originally we set a target of raising £10,000 but now that has gone up to £50,000 just because of the overwhelming support. 

‘There are hundreds who suffer and they are such a tight-knit community as we found when my wife set up an Instagram account charting our journey.

‘When Florence passed away we had an overwhelming response from those we have connected with. The reaction we had from other families from all over the world was something I’ve never experienced.

‘We had messages saying how much Florence and the way we lived with this was an inspiration to them. For a lot of families Florence was a beacon of hope and when she went it did hit them hard because she was a shining star of how you can live with Dravet.’

Dunn initially found it hard to ask for support in his quest but quickly remembered he played in the same England Under 19s side as the likes of Ben Stokes, Joe Root and Jos Buttler, cricketers with huge followings. 

Their support and that of the whole cricket family has been overwhelming.

Dunn revealed the wider cricket community had offered massive support to him and his family

‘The money we raise can make such a difference to the families who are still going through this,’ adds Dunn, sitting in the players’ dining room at the Oval where he has felt part of the Surrey family since he first played for the county at 13.

‘The harsh realities will I think encourage people to help because this shouldn’t happen to any child. No child should be unwell as this.

‘No parent should have to deal with losing a child. It’s just one of those unnatural things that don’t happen a lot because it’s not right.

‘Even if we can get to the stage where the quality of life is that much better for sufferers and you can protect families that much more then that’s where I’d love to be. And the only way to do that is to raise awareness and carry on the research and trial new medication.

‘I will be doing my 5k every day and anybody is very welcome to join me. We had to see and do things no parent should ever have to see. Now it’s our turn to try to make sure others don’t have to go through what we did.’

To help Matt and Jessica Dunn in their fundraising challenge, go to www.gofundme.com/f/for-florence-dunn