Great Ormond Street Hospital
My daughter was born at Watford General Hospital on the millennium. She’s our third child.
She came home and seemed fine, but at a week old, on the Saturday, she turned the colour of marble and became unresponsive. We called Watford General Hospital who said to wait as it was ‘probably a bug’ and to come back on Monday if no better. Had we listened to that advice she wouldn’t be here now.
We were still worried so called NHS Direct who quickly realised that she was very ill and told me to rush her to our nearest hospital, Barnet. A trip that normally takes 15 minutes I completed in six minutes, driving on the wrong side of the road, crashing red lights, even driving on the pavement where I had to.
At Barnet it was the usual Saturday night chaos at A&E: frantic, rushed, busy.
They decided they couldn’t handle whatever was wrong with our daughter and tried to find a specialist paediatric unit with both a surgical team available and a bed in intensive care. The only one was at the John Radcliffe in Oxford, a journey which she wouldn’t have survived, as it turned out.
As the ambulance was being readied to blue-light her over to Oxford, a call came in from Great Ormond Street Hospital to say an ITU bed had become available and their surgical team was on standby. Someone up there was looking out for her. The ambulance was diverted to GOSH.
My wife went with our daughter in the ambulance and I tried to follow in the car. I lost the ambulance as I was doing 60mph down the Finchley Road, so goodness knows how fast he was travelling!
At GOSH it was like day after night. Even though it was 3am on a Sunday, we were met by name at the main door and while our tiny baby was being wheeled down the corridor they were doing tests and X-rays on the move. The place was calm, professional and purposeful, and gave us confidence after the chaotic A&E locally.
The lead surgeon, Prof Pierro (a man of few words!) and his team had just finished a 16-hour stint and they were necking back chocolate and coffee to keep themselves going.
He examined our daughter gently and carefully and then told us that she was critically ill and that he didn’t think he could save her but he would try. He said had we been an hour later she wouldn’t have been here still, and that what was wrong was that much of her internal organs were the wrong way round and the blood supply to them was being cut off so they were dying.
He told us to say goodbye to her. Not a moment we ever want to relive.
Meanwhile a team of seven (!) consultants worked on her in surgery while a nurse sat with us all the time, simply to be there for us at such a low point. Every 20 minutes one of the surgeons would come out and tell us how she was doing in surgery.
She survived the surgery and was taken to ITU on a ventilator and with six drips in. We didn’t leave the hospital for the next three days. Prof Pierro visited every morning and evening but said very little other than it was too early to tell how she was.
On day three, he gave a tiny smile and said ‘a little better today’ and on day four she was transferred to the high dependency ward where the nurses ‘adopted’ her and fought over who was going to look after her!
We were allowed into parent accommodation on the main GOSH site and soon after that we moved into a hotel round the corner so our other children could visit us.
After a few weeks, she came home and thank God is fine apart from an enormous scar right across her stomach which she proudly calls her ‘stripe’.
She is now at secondary school, having won an academic scholarship to a local public school, and we are very proud of her. Our little miracle.
We obviously remain big supporters of the hospital and my wife and daughter visit every Christmas to bring presents to those in ITU and on the ward where our daughter was, plus for Prof Pierro.
It’s an amazing place and we were left at the time with the thought that whatever happened, we would at least have given her the very best possible chance of survival at the best children’s hospital in the world, whose services are all free.
Comments
I have to say that it is not unusual for me to be scratching my head wondering why EAT carries some of these 'blogs' - and apart from this being a fantastic cause worth of every column inch of publicity it can possibly get I was beginning to wonder why this one featured... until I put two and two together and noted that Mr Black is Head of Commercial Marketing at S&P (see the story three below this one...).
Mr Black - my heart goes out to you and your family. A parent's second worst nightmare is when their children get so sick that it becomes life or death. Many of us will no doubt have got in a sweat for every simple knock, the occasional broken bone or when a snotty nose or high temperature affects our kids.
Your story is an inspiration to every parent - grandparent, even - to trust in those that dedicate their lives to healing.
Thank you for sharing it, Mr Black. And thank you, EAT, for publishing it.