Heartfelt plea for life savers

Without the cardiac surgery unit at Sydney Children’s Hospital, Cooper Low would have died from a virus attacking his heart.

Boisterous Cooper Low, 2, enjoys playground time at Drummoyne in Sydney’s inner west, with dad Pete, mum Jess, and eight-week-old sister Jersey. Picture: John Feder

Cooper Low is a boisterous two-year-old who loves kicking balls and bopping to 1990s dance hits.

Yet the blue-eyed “miracle boy” with a dimple in his chin ­almost didn’t make it through his first year of life.

At 10 days, his mother noticed he was lethargic and having trouble breathing, so she called an ambulance. He was taken first to a nearby hospital, and then on to the Sydney Children’s Hospital at Randwick, in the city’s eastern suburbs.

There, doctors gave a diagnosis to his parents, Jess and Peter, and it was not good: Cooper had contracted an enterovirus that had resulted in myocarditis — the virus was attacking the walls of his heart. Worse was to come. Cooper went into cardiac arrest in the intensive care unit as his terrified parents watched on.

For 26 minutes, doctors compressed his tiny chest with their fingers. Remarkably, he rallied. His heart began to beat.

“There was no way in the world we were giving up the fight,” Ms Low, 34, told The Weekend Australian.

She said if there had not been a paediatric cardiac surgeon at the hospital, her son, who weighed 3.3kg at the time, would have died. He was too ill to be transferred across the city to the Children’s Hospital at Westmead.

Within the hour, Cooper was in delicate surgery to insert cannulas into his neck and was put on an extracorporeal membrane oxygenation machine to bypass his heart and lungs. He was given dialysis for his kidneys as well.

After 176 days in the intensive care unit — surviving other complications, including a staph infection — he finally returned home.

Now Cooper is a healthy, thriving boy.

He still takes medication for his heart, and has neurological check-ups once a year, but he is expected to live a full and normal life.

Ms Low, a physical education teacher, is furious that other children’s lives could be put at risk if the once-thriving cardiac service at Randwick is threatened.

“We needed it within the hour, and if we didn’t have that, Cooper wouldn’t be here today,” she says.

“They saved Cooper’s life, and we will be forever grateful and thankful.”