Easter miracles: Three-year-old Xander back in his boots as the world welcomes tough little Ethan
Today, Xander, 3, stands tall in his cowboy boots. But less than 10 months ago, a freak accident had left him in a coma at the Royal Children’s Hospital.
Victoria
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Standing tall in his cowboy boots, three-year-old Xander is reaching new heights.
But less than 10 months ago, the yard he enjoys running around on was a place of chaos, as firefighters, paramedics and police descended on the family’s home.
Their bonfire had exploded in a freak accident, leaving Xander and his younger brother Tanner, then 22-months-old, with severe burns to their hands and face.
An aerosol can had somehow ended up in the flames, and an idyllic afternoon became a nightmare in mere seconds.
Mum Prue Matthieson, facing away from the fire when it exploded, was protected by her clothes and scooped up the boys, racing them to the shower and locking them inside to get water on their burns.
Her sons’ recovery is a testament to her quick actions, emergency services and the incredible work of the Royal Children’s Hospital, home to the only paediatric specialist burns unit for all of Victoria and Tasmania.
Xander was airlifted to hospital while Tanner – who had been further away from the fire – was taken by road ambulance.
Doctors rushed Xander into theatre to clean his wounds and placed him in a coma for a week and a half, while his younger brother – who they initially thought would also need skin grafts – was also hospitalised for more than a week.
Ms Matthieson said the support from the RCH was “amazing” with the “fabulous” intensive care nurses stringing up ‘happy birthday’ banners when Xander, still in a coma, turned 3 in the days after the accident.
“(The hospital) is definitely a 10 out of 10 in my books,” she said.
“We had a social worker that actually met me down in the emergency room and she stayed with us pretty much throughout his whole recovery.
“Offering support for not even just the kids but for us as well, if we needed counselling or if we just needed someone to sit with the kids while we ducked downstairs.”
Finally, after a month in hospital, Xander was well to return home to his brother Tanner, who had recovered well and been discharged earlier.
Xander’s journey as an RCH patient is not over yet and he will need to wear compression garments for up to 23 hours a day for the next two years to help the scars heal.
But thanks to the incredible burns team, the bundle of energy is back home with his family, free to run around and just bea kid.
“He handles his treatment really well,” Ms Matthieson said.
“The burns team has just been amazing.
“They’ve been super helpful, super friendly.”
The Good Friday Appeal raised a record $23m, easily eclipsing last year’s mark of $22.3m in a sign of the charity’s growing impact.
As a Mum who knows how important a well-resourced RCH is, Ms Matthieson said another hugely successful year for tin shakers was reassuring for families.
“We’re absolutely blown away to find out how much the community has raised,” she said.
“To know we can go into that kind of setting and have access to fabulous surgeons and an amazing team, without the money that’s being funnelled into to that hospital through these charity drives, that wouldn’t be possible.’
Ethan Whitley: ‘A tough little cookie’
It was a miracle that the lump at the base of Ethan Whiteley’s neck was discovered in time.
By sheer luck the little boy, growing contentedly in his mother’s womb, just happened to raise his arm; a tiny movement that probably saved his life.
It meant despite the very best efforts of the determined sonographer, it was impossible to get a clear image of Ethan’s heart that day and mum Kate Delacoe and dad Dean Whiteley were asked to come back for another scan.
Four weeks later they returned expecting a straightforward appointment, but this time a swelling was noticed around their unborn baby’s throat.
The Sassafras couple was sent for a more detailed scan. Arriving at Monash Health, they said things moved quickly.
Ms Delacoe said doctors confirmed Ethan had a goitre, an enlarged gland, sitting below his thyroid that was compressing his airways.
They were also told that without urgent intervention their baby would not be able to breathe unassisted at birth and likely to require major, complex surgery to secure his airway before being born by caesarean section.
What the scan couldn’t confirm was if the goitre was because of an underactive or overactive thyroid, essential information needed to treat the condition.
The only way to find out for certain was to do a rare in-utero procedure, performed on less than one in 40,000 babies in Australia every year.
Specialists at Monash Health performed ultrasound-guided foetal blood sampling to investigate Ethan’s thyroid function and found he had a profoundly underactive thyroid.
“An underactive thyroid is a more successful treatment,” Mr Whiteley said, “because it can be treated with an injection straight to Ethan while he was still in the womb.”
Ms Delacoe said the team at Monash Health was very clear about risks and outcomes.
“We put our trust in them and just had to hope everything would be good,” she said.
The director of Perinatal Care at Monash Health Associate Professor Daniel Rolnik started weekly treatments in late January, injecting a thyroid hormone into the amniotic fluid via an ultrasound-guided procedure.
“After the first week of treatment the team noticed a reduction,” Mr Whiteley said. “All the signs were good.”
Ms Delacoe said from the outset the perinatal team was calm and reassuring.
“We knew this procedure was rare and risky, but each week I went in for the injections and everyone was genuinely excited for us to see how much the goitre had shrunk,” she said.
“Without their support and positivity we would have been much more stressed and concerned.”
Associate Professor Rolnik said the treatment also meant that all signs of airway compression disappeared before Ethan was born.
“Had Ethan been delivered without treatment, he most likely would not be able to breathe or swallow, as other neck structures, the trachea (air pipe) and oesophagus (food pipe), were compressed by the enlarged thyroid,” he said.
“The main advantage of treating before birth is that the growth shrinks, the compression disappears and the amniotic fluid goes back to normal.”
Ms Delacoe said it was a little bit of the unknown when it came to Ethan’s birth at Monash Medical Centre in Clayton, but on 9 March Ethan arrived on his due date and was crying loudly, much to everyone’s relief.
“The fact Ethan was born without any complications felt like a miracle after all the worry we’d had,” Ms Delacoe said.
“The doctors were amazing and it is thanks to them that Ethan is here; happy, healthy and thriving.
“He is a tough little cookie.”
Penny Fowler: A new record for the Good Friday Appeal
The Good Friday Appeal has once again brought out the very best in Victorians.
We are so deeply grateful to everyone who helped raise a new record amount of $23,061,230 for our world class Royal Children’s Hospital.
This money will change lives and will save lives.
Our sick children are our most vulnerable and on Good Friday the community showed, again how deeply we care about those children in need.
So many dug deep, from the pensioners who phoned in offering all they could, to the Andrews and Albanese governments who gave millions.
The Good Friday Appeal is our community coming together as one & we couldn’t do it without the thousands of volunteers.
We had tin rattlers on street corners across the state, from the country to the suburbs of Melbourne.
We had the CFA who raise dan incredible $1.6 million, we had raffle ticket sellers, an amazing Telethon on Channel 7 and we had a staggering 102,000on Good Friday coming to Kids Day Out at the Convention Centre to play their role in supporting the Appeal.
Many were families that have been touched personally by the wonderful work of the doctors and nurses at the Royal Children’s Hospital, who have seen first hand the work this hospital does because of the generosity of Victorians.
The Good Friday Appeal is so important to the Herald Sun and core part of our commitment to this state. Since 1931 when journalist sat the Herald and Weekly Times first started this charity, the Good Friday Appeal has raised more than $444 million.
We could not be more proud or more grateful of Victorians for opening up their hearts for the Appeal this year and every year.
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