Townsville Hospital’s 12 miracles of Christmas for 2020
From miracle bubs, to unbelievable recoveries, there have been some incredible success stories that have come in and out the doors of Townsville Hospital this year. Here are their stories >>
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FROM miracle bubs, to unbelievable recoveries, there have been some incredible success stories that have come in and out the doors of Townsville Hospital this year.
Here are some of their special stories.
JANUARY MIRACLE
A routine home visit from a Townsville University Hospital midwife is credited with saving three-week old Tully Orr’s life after she had turned blue due to a lack of oxygen.
Tully had a rough start to life, born prematurely at 35 weeks and three days before developing respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), a common respiratory infection.
Mum Alison Orr said the first month of Tully’s life was a whirr of hospital admissions before a routine visit from a midwife sent their world crashing down.
“Tully was having some on-and-off breathing difficulties that we thought was just a common cold, but she had started to turn blue when a midwife came for a home visit,” she said.
“The midwife told us to get Tully to hospital, but when she left, she came right back and said: ‘Actually, call an ambulance right now’.”
FEBRUARY MIRACLE
WHEN 13-year-old Cairns local Klaire Metcalfe collapsed at school in February, mum Jocelyn thought her daughter was just dehydrated.
By 8pm, Jocelyn was holding her daughter’s hand in Townsville University Hospital’s paediatric intensive care unit as she recovered from emergency brain surgery.
“When Klaire collapsed the school called an ambulance; however, we all just thought she was dehydrated,” Jocelyn said.
“At the hospital she was given fluids and started regaining consciousness, but as they wheeled her into the emergency bay she started trying to tell me she was cold, but couldn’t get the words out, so she was just saying ‘brrr’.
“After they managed to calm her she was rushed for a scan where they found a bleed on her brain; she was immediately put on a helicopter and sent to Townsville for surgery.”
MARCH MIRACLE
A NORMAL Saturday night for the Niudamu family turned to tragedy in seconds in March this year when 10-year-old Edward Niudamu experimented with a can of insect spray and a lighter.
Edward’s mum Rebecca Niudamu will never forget the sound of the can exploding in her kitchen, where she thought Edward was sweeping the floor.
“I ran straight to the kitchen to find a few small fires which I put out and then straight outside to where Edward had run to find him badly burned,” she said.
“We took him inside and put him under the cold shower while we got ready to take him to the Cairns Hospital emergency department.”
Rebecca said by the time they had arrived at the emergency department the skin from his belly button up including his arms and face was blistering and peeling off.
APRIL MIRACLE
Two-year-old Normanton toddler Joshua Christie-Johnston had just celebrated his second birthday when the typically high-energy tot became unwell.
A visit to the GP saw Joshua diagnosed with pneumonia. He had an overnight stay in Normanton Hospital before being transferred to Mount Isa Hospital for more specialised care.
“We spent a week in Mount Isa where the doctors gave him antibiotics, however, he kept getting worse,” Joshua’s mother, Heather said.
“When we first went to the hospital, I was full of hope. I thought, ‘he’s in hospital, he’ll get better’ and when he just wasn’t improving with no answers as to why I started to really worry.
“We had people from Perth, Darwin, the Gold Coast and Normanton all praying for him.”
Clinicians found that Joshua had empyema, or fluid on his lungs, which needed to be drained as soon as possible, so he was transferred to the Townsville University Hospital’s paediatric intensive care unit.
>> READ HIS INCREDIBLE STORY HERE
MAY MIRACLE
Seven months ago, Kayden Gerrard-Priddle’s parents, Alison and Emma, feared for the worst when their 17-month-old son was put in an induced coma in Townsville University Hospital’s paediatric intensive care unit after the Townsville toddler was struggling to breathe.
“Kayden had been consistently sick from about six months old with recurrent chest infections and then in May this year, it all came to a head,” Alison said.
“Emma and I both work in childcare so we knew the warning signs; Kayden was having trouble breathing so we called an ambulance and he was rushed to hospital.
“The doctors monitored him throughout the night where he was given steroids and nebulised (where liquid medication is converted into a mist and inhaled) to try and reduce the size of his throat.”
>> READ HIS AMAZING STORY HERE
JUNE MIRACLE
When Toni-Leigh Bowron went from an active, bubbly 11-year-old to a spending all her time in bed in March this year her grandmother Janelle Gilmore knew something was wrong.
“She just wasn’t herself in the week leading up to her going to hospital,” Ms Gilmore said.
“After a few days I went to see her at her dad’s house to find she had a very high temperature and a bruise on her leg I hadn’t noticed before.
“On closer look I didn’t think it was just a bruise, so I took her to the hospital.”
An MRI at the Townsville University Hospital found that Toni-Leigh had sepsis, a condition caused by an abnormal response of the body to an infection that had started from a boil on her knee.
Sepsis can lead to tissue damage, multiple organ failure and even death if not identified early.
Ms Gilmore said she’d never seen so many doctors and nurses at once.
JULY MIRACLE
RUNNING around herding the cows, patting the dogs and feeding the horses was a rite of passage for nine-year-old Darcy Dawson, who lives on a property in Proserpine.
It was during one of Darcy’s many adventures that he inadvertently landed himself in trouble, inhaling the eggs of a parasite that took up residence in his body and caused what is known as Hypatid Disease.
“Darcy originally presented to Townsville University Hospital with pneumonia and we didn’t expect it to be anything more than that,” Darcy’s mum Deanne said.
“Next thing we know we’re up in the paediatric intensive care unit and it was here they found four large cysts in his lung and three in his liver, all ranging from five to eight centimetres in size.
“Eventually they made the decision to operate and take the lower third of his right lung to remove the cysts.”
AUGUST MIRACLE
FOR parents everywhere, a run-of-the-mill cold is just another part of parenthood, but for four-year-old Elijah and parents Ysabella and Jonathon a simple cold turned terrifying when treatment went from a quick X-ray to an intensive care stay.
“Elijah is a little ball of energy so when he became lethargic, we got really worried,” Ysabella said.
“We took him to the hospital the first time for ‘flu symptoms and came back because he wasn’t getting better; that’s when they did X-rays and found fluid on his lungs.”
Elijah was soon admitted to the children’s ward where things escalated quickly.
“My husband had just gone home to rest when suddenly Elijah’s heart rate jumped up really high,” Ysabella said.
“This nurse came rushing in and said, ‘I’m going to push this button and it’s going to be a little scary because the room will fill up with doctors and nurses’ and I thought, ‘I’ll be fine’, but I wasn’t.
“As soon as everyone came running in, reality hit me I couldn’t help myself, I started crying.
SEPTEMBER MIRACLE
NATE Adamson is a tough and adventurous kid who is a rising talent on the local motocross and endurance racing circuit in Townsville.
On September 10, Nate was riding his bike down to the local river to see his mates when he stacked it into a ditch not far from the family’s Black River property.
Mum Wendy Adamson said she knew something was seriously wrong with her son by looking at the pain wrought across her 14-year-old’s face.
“He has snapped his wrist a couple of times and sustained plenty of injuries, but this is a kid who never complains about pain, he has always just been able to get up and suck it up,” she said.
“As soon as I saw him after the crash, I knew he was in big trouble when he said I needed to call the ambulance.
“It is a terrible feeling knowing that your child is in pain and not knowing what is wrong or how you can help them”.
OCTOBER MIRACLE
AN idyllic weekend on the family farm was turned upside down when a farm accident left 10-year-old Chelsea Borg with a shattered skull and a brain bleed.
A farm worker and Chelsea had decided to take a buggy out to inspect the property’s irrigation when a wheel ruptured, and the vehicle careened into a tree.
Mum Sarah Borg was back at the farmhouse cooking a Saturday afternoon barbecue for the family when she heard about the crash from another farm worker.
“We didn’t really think it was that serious when we got there; Chelsea was talking, knew where she was and what had happened and hadn’t lost consciousness,” she said.
“Our farm is just 10 minutes down the road from Sarina Hospital, so we took her there to get checked out and the decision was taken to transfer her to Mackay for a full lot of scans.”
>> READ MORE ABOUT HER INCREDIBLE STORY
NOVEMBER MIRACLE
NOVEMBER holds a special place in the hearts of Stephanie and Bronson Hutchen, as it marks a day they thought they’d never see – the first birthday of their firstborn son, Oliver, who, despite having five surgeries in his first eight months of life, has pulled through without losing his cheeky smile.
Stephanie said the doctors first noticed an issue when Oliver was still in utero, but it wasn’t until he was taken to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, at 32 weeks weighing just 1.65kg, that anyone realised the extreme extent of his rare condition.
“Oliver wasn’t born with an oesophagus, so where his mouth was, it was just a little pouch, and when he was swallowing, it was draining to an airway that was connected to the stomach,” Stephanie said.
“This meant that, basically, his food pipe was connected to his airway.”
The rare one in 5,000 condition known as tracheoesophageal fistula (TOF) meant that Oliver had to undergo surgery less than 24 hours after birth.
DECEMBER MIRACLE
Separating from her new baby was twice as difficult for Mackay resident Rachel Little earlier this month when the need for emergency surgery on her 11-week-old son Kaius Black meant she also had to leave Kaius’s identical twin brother, Kowan, in Mackay with family.
Baby Kaius had been without any major health issues in the first 11 weeks of his life until Rachel noticed some significant swelling in his groin area.
“When I noticed it, I took him straight to our GP to get it looked at,” she said.
“I had a few complications during my pregnancy with Kaius having restricted growth, so I didn’t want to take any risks.
>> READ HIS INCREDIBLE STORY HERE
Originally published as Townsville Hospital’s 12 miracles of Christmas for 2020
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