JANUARY

“Get him to the hospital straight away or I’m calling the ambulance”, was the advice the Haylock family’s GP gave when their son Toby presented with flu-like symptoms on January 9.

Toby, now eight-years-old, spent the first four months of his life in the Townsville Hospital’s

neonatal intensive care unit and a special care nursery after being born pre-term.

His lungs were severely underdeveloped and he has asthma, making him more susceptible to

being seriously knocked around by respiratory illness.

“It started with cold or flu like symptoms but when he developed a heavy cough we took Toby straight to our GP,” mum Jasmine said.

“When we got to the Townsville ED his oxygen saturations weren’t great and he needed to be

admitted to the paediatric intensive care unit (PICU).

“He needed to be put on a high-flow oxygen machine to get his stats back up, it was a pretty scary three days.”

The family have a strict asthma management plan they follow for Toby, even though the condition rarely affects him daily.

“It is not a day-to-day problem but when he gets sick that is when he can get really sick really quickly,” Jasmine said.

“He is usually such an energetic boy so one of the big clues is if he starts to look a bit lethargic.

“We keep a puffer in his school bag and a grandma’s house but the big thing we’ve learned is to keep a close eye on him if he gets sick.”

Jasmine said one of her clear memories from the time was the nurse who would take her son out to watch the helicopter take off and land when he was becoming restless in PICU.

The Haylock’s will head up to the Tablelands over the holidays to spend time with a large

extended family.

FEBRUARY

When Yuriko Sabasio’s lungs began to collapse she was raced from Cairns Hospital to Townsville for urgent care in the paediatric intensive care unit.

Yuriko had a rare infectious disease melioidosis which attacks the lungs and is fatal in about 40 per cent of cases.

In Queensland this year there has only been 39 confirmed cases of melioidosis.

For 20 days, Yuriko clung to life in an induced coma as mum Rowena and dad Titoma prayed for a miracle.

“We knew when we had to get on a plane at 2am that something was really wrong,” Rowena said.

“You try and put on a brave face but when you see your daughter spend 20 days in a coma it is hard to stay positive.

“It was a really hard month and we prayed a lot so it was so good to see her open her eyes.”

It wasn’t until the end of February that Yuriko was able to head home from Cairns.

Yuriko also required lung surgery in July to remove an abscess caused by the illness.

Despite her battle, Yuriko continued to run and was committed to competing in the Whitfield State School athletics carnival.

“After she got back to Cairns she started running again right away, nothing was going to stop her,” Rowena said.

“It was less than three weeks after her surgery the athletics carnival and she won the 100-metre

sprint. She was so proud and so were we.”

The family are heading to Bamaga for a camping trip for Christmas.

MARCH

Emergency surgery, a midnight dash to Townsville and more than 48 hours in an induced coma was the last thing from Tania Bower’s mind when her three-year-old son Lucas complained of a stiff neck.

Ms Bower said on March 10 she took Lucas to Cairns Hospital after an worsening pain in his neck, thinking some medication and a good night’s rest would do the trick.

“The next day he had developed an abscess so big that he couldn’t straighten his head and he

needed to be flown to Townsville for emergency surgery,” she said.

“We arrived at The Townsville Hospital at 2.30am and by 4am he was being wheeled into surgery.

“It all went well but it was scary seeing him in an induced coma for two days after the operation.”

Ms Bower praised the Royal Flying Doctor Service and staff in Cairns and Townsville for acting so quickly, as the risk of a delayed response was having the abscess potentially cut off Lucas’s airway.

“If Lucas didn’t get the help that he needed so quickly, he wouldn’t have made it; there’s no other way to say it,” she said.

Ms Bower said Lucas had bounced back to his usual energetic self and was looking forward to giving his neck a good work out with astronomy equipment on his Christmas list to Santa.

“Lucas has loved learning about the solar system so this year he’s asked for binoculars and

anything planet related,” she said.

“He’ll be happy to play with his brother and relax and for us it will be lovely to have the whole family together for a quiet Christmas.”

APRIL

Named after the prophet Isaiah, whose name means ‘to save’, little Isaiah Rudd courageously fought and won a battle against kidney disease and cardiac arrest in April this year to now be a happy, healthy six-month-old looking forward to his first Christmas.

Born with Bilateral Renal Dysplasia with chronic kidney disease, undeveloped lungs and heart

defect patent ductus arteriosus, Isaiah’s first two months of life were spent in The Townsville

Hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit and special care nursery.

On the day Mum Helen Sariman was about to take him home to the family for the first time he had a cardiac arrest and required another two-week admission.

“Doctors told us he wasn’t going to make it that his heart was enlarged and his kidneys were

failing,” Helen said.

“We knew it was out of everyone but God’s hands which is why we named him Isaiah.

“I called him our little fighter but the doctors keep telling me they’ve never seen a bigger fighter.”

In May, doctors operated on Isaiah’s kidneys before a second successful operation on 15 October.

In the months between Isaiah has had five separate admissions to the paediatric intensive care

unit and made a trip to Brisbane for highly specialised care.

Helen said one of the most bittersweet moments of the year was realising Isaiah was more used to a hospital setting than he was at home.

“The hospital has been our home this year and we’ve got to know so many of the doctors and

nurses so well,” she said.

“On one of the few days I got to take him home he cried and cried. The next day when I took him back to Townsville for an appointment as soon as he saw the doctor he cracked the biggest smile.

“I don’t know how to thank the doctors and nurses; the whole lot have stood shoulder to shoulder with our family from the beginning.”

Isaiah isn’t out of the woods but the prognosis is much better from those harrowing early days.

He hasn’t required a hospital admission since his latest surgery on 14 October and his team of

doctors are encouraged by his progress.

“Everyone is really happy with how he is going he is starting to get stronger and his medications are slowly starting to get less,” she said.

“He really is our little miracle and we’ll treat every day with him as a blessing and make sure his life is one surrounded by love and joy.”

MAY

Just like a lizard regenerates its tail, Tia Saunders and Mick Nyborg are keeping a close eye on their daughter Savannah as her lungs slowly repair themselves.

Savannah has spent almost as much time in hospital as out in her first year of life with Mum Tia and Dad Mick by her side.

Born premature at 35 weeks and weighing just 1800 grams, Savannah spent her first 26 days in the special care nursery at Mount Isa.

After just a few weeks at home a nasty pneumonia coupled with septicaemia required an urgent transfer from Mount Isa Hospital to Townsville’s paediatric intensive care unit.

For nine gruelling days, Tia and Mick watched a machine breathe for their baby girl as an intensive course of antibiotics and medicine ran their course.

“Ever since she was born everything has gone against her but she is a fighter,” Tia said.

“Her lungs have been badly damaged but the paediatricians explained that for children under 10 lungs regenerate a bit like a lizard’s tail.

“She is growing beautifully and for anyone who didn’t know you wouldn’t guess she was premature and has had this tough start to life.”

Tia said simply having Savannah with her six sisters and Dad for Christmas this year was a

miracle.

“It has been hard been a difficult year but although we’ll only be having a minimal Christmas it will be a very special Christmas,” she said.

“She’s too young to comprehend what a year it’s been but it’ll be such a beautiful moment

watching her little hands rip the paper off her present on Christmas Day.”

JUNE

When you’re a registered nurse, you never imagine that one day you’ll be rushing your child through the hospital with specialists from the paediatric, surgical and paediatric intensive care unit (PICU) in tow, yet this was the frightening reality for Townsville Hospital nurse and mum Kimberley Bury.

After being unwell for a week with a viral ear and throat infection, Kimberley’s son Austin Bury was taken to Townsville Hospital Emergency Department on June 25, where imaging showed a complete white-out on the right side of Austin’s chest due to infection.

Austin’s sickness had gone from infection, to phenomena and eventually empyema.

“The registrar said if we had waited another day or two then he would have had a bigger battle on his hands,” Kimberley said.

“They ventilated him in case things went downhill; he had a central line and chest drain put in that night.

“In the following days they thought they saw a pneumothorax, which is where air leaks into the space between the lungs and chest wall, so they put another chest drain in.

“In the end, the two drains took about 450ml of fluid out of his chest, which was crazy to me

because he was barely 12-months-old when this happened.”

Austin was ventilated for four days and when the drains were clamped off, a drug was put through the tubes to break down any remaining fluid, which meant nurses had to rotate Austin every 30-60 minutes for three days.

“The second drain came out on the fifth day and that was when I got my first cuddles with him since we arrived which was so special,” Kimberley said.

Since coming out, Kimberley said her son had bounced back with phenomenal force.

“For a child who didn’t want to eat before this all happened, he’s now eating us out of house and home,” Kimberley said.

“He’s got some scarring in his left lung and he may never be an Olympic swimmer, but that doesn’t matter because at least we’re home - we’re one of the lucky ones.”

Kimberley was overwhelmed with emotion as she talked about the support she received from The Townsville Hospital.

“The dedication, compassion and knowledge they have is incredible; they save little people’s lives and nothing I can do or say will ever repay that,” Kimberley said.

“They work long hours, they’re on call and what they must have to see is heartbreaking, but I hope they know we will be forever thankful and never forget what they’ve done.”

JULY

When Eliza Fletcher was born, mum Meagan was over the moon — but joy turned to horror when her baby was rushed to the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) with the same disease that had taken her eldest sister 27 years ago.

Eliza had been diagnosed with hyaline membrane disease; a disease which had caused her

infants lungs to collapse with each breath.

Rushed to NICU, Eliza spent her first week of life intubated and under the watchful eyes of doctors and nurses. After a week, Eliza was given the all clear and Meagan was finally able to bring her home. However, the doctors’ visits didn’t stop there.

Fast-forward seven months and little Eliza was back in the hospital with croup and bronchitis,

which Meagan said was heartbreaking.

“Ever since Eliza was born she’d had really ragged breathing and had struggled to get air in,” she said.

“We had an appointment to look at her windpipe but when we arrived at hospital the doctors

rushed us through to paediatric intensive care unit (PICU) and booked her in for the next morning so they could have a look at her throat.

“When they had a look, her airway was so tiny that it had almost closed shut so they had to

immediately put a tube in there to keep her alive.”

Eliza spent her first birthday in PICU where doctors had her sedated so that the inflammation in her throat could subside.

“When your baby is born, you never think that you’re going to spend her first birthday in hospital,” she said.

After a week in PICU, Eliza was brought out of sedation and Meagan said she was a completely different baby.

“Even when Eliza was sick she would be laughing and smiling at the doctors in PICU and I just kept saying, ‘I promise she is sick, she’s just a happy baby,’ which everyone understood,” she said.

“The difference is, back then she would laugh and then struggle to get breath and then laugh

again and now she’s just so happy and bubbly but she doesn’t have any of those previous

problems at all.

“I have so many words of thanks for everyone in the hospital; from the doctors who made sure I knew what was happening, to the nurses, speech therapists and dietitians.

“I honestly couldn’t be happier with the support we received and even now it brings tears of

happiness because Eliza is here today because of their hard work.”

Meagan also praised her parents, who helped her get through the tough ordeal.

This year Meagan, Eliza and the family are looking forward to a quiet Christmas surrounded by family in Townsville.

AUGUST

For years, Megan Baigent and partner Matt were told they would never naturally conceive.

Yet just once month after arriving home from adopting their beautiful daughter Gracie, the couple fell pregnant with Indiana.

Indiana was born premature at 36 weeks by emergency C-section. Her fragile frame came in at just under two kilos, with doctors noting they had never seen such a small placenta.

After a week in Mackay Base Hospital, Megan finally took her little girl home but a few days later they were back in hospital and things were shakier than ever.

“One afternoon she stopped breathing and turned blue — it was terrifying,” she said.

“We were sent to Townsville where we spent a month in the paediatric intensive care unit and for so long we didn’t know whether she was going to pull through.”

Results showed that Indiana had come down with bronchiolitis, which could be potentially deadly for the fragile bub.

“In the end it she had to have tubes inserted just so she could breathe and even more tubes again so they could feed her,” she said.

“It was really scary seeing all those tubes covering my baby’s body and it was scary because she was so small.”

Megan said her saving grace was her mother, sister, husband and treating clinician Dr Greg

Wiseman.

“We wouldn’t have been able to bring Indiana home without the help of the doctors,” she said.

“I can’t describe how helpful they were; they gave me so much confidence that everything was going to be okay and made me feel at ease.

“Indiana is home and starting to put on a little bit of weight which is great, she’s also just started to smile and make baby sounds.

“It’s great to see her on the path of recovery.”

SEPTEMBER

For Samantha Rodgers and her partner Arron Wilson, Father’s Day was supposed to be a day filled with relaxation and family time.

Instead, it turned into a whirlwind stay in hospital that was so unexpected it had doctors intrigued at the intensity.

The tumultuous journey started when Samantha noticed that Lewis’s bad cough, which had been around for about 24 hours, had taken a turn for the worst and was impacting his ability to breathe.

Lewis was sucking his chest in the whole way just to catch a breath, so the couple called an

ambulance and rushed him to emergency, where doctors put it down to croup and gave him

adrenaline and steroids.

After four frightening hours had gone by with no improvement, PICU consultant Dr Greg Wiseman made the decision to bring Lewis up to his unit.

“Lewis spent the first half of the week in PICU before returning home but not even 24 hours after we arrived home we had to rush him back to hospital,” Samantha said.

As Lewis’s oxygen levels dropped dangerously low and the risk of suffocation grew, doctors put him on oxygen, steroids and 30-minute intervals of adrenaline to keep his airways open.

“It was absolutely crazy because everything happened so quickly,” Samantha said.

“Doctors were really intrigued and worried because it had gone from an initial four-hour stay in emergency to a potentially life-threatening scenario within the space of 48 hours.”

After multiple tests, doctors finally unravelled the mystery behind Lewis’s quick and very

frightening stay. It was put down to para-influenza 3 — a strain of influenza that has no vaccine and is known for causing respiratory problems.

“There were also concerns of an underlying airway condition which may have caused the

uncommon severity, but he’s since seen specialists and everything is back to normal,” Samantha said.

“I have to hand it to PICU; their team is absolutely thorough and so professional.”

Little Lewis’s immune system is still a weak so he won’t get the chance to visit Santa this year, but Samantha said her and partner Arron will look at making his outside adventures more enjoyable with some play equipment. In the meantime, Lewis will be having an early Christmas in Townsville and loving family members in New South Wales.

OCTOBER

It’s every parent’s worst nightmare: one moment you’re in the backyard with your child, the next you’re rushing them to the hospital with a suspected bite from the deadly Eastern Brown snake.

For Longreach local Shelley Inglis and her two-year-old son Logan, this nightmare was their

terrifying reality.

“Logan was playing with the hose in the backyard being his normal cheeky self,” Shelley said.

“I lost sight of him behind the sheets on the washing line and when I came towards him he flung himself into my arms crying.

“Before I knew it, his eyes had rolled back into his head and we were rushing to put him in the recovery position while calling the ambulance.”

For Shelley, it was a tumultuous journey from start to end — Logan was unresponsive when the ambulance arrived, but was responding to pain when he reached the hospital which was a positive sign.

Within hours Logan had gone downhill again; he was lethargic and could barely move his limbs, which prompted a flight with Royal Flying Doctor Service to The Townsville Hospital where an MRI showed multiple small blood clots on Logan’s brain.

“The day after the MRI doctors tried to wake Logan up but he was unresponsive and had serious trouble breathing which was terrifying because we thought, ‘is his body shutting down?’,” Shelley said.

However, one week after the snake bite, on Logan’s birthday, doctors reduced the drugs and let Logan wake up.

“Before the breathing tube was out Logan was smiling, which was a magical moment,” Shelley said.

“We were able to leave hospital on Logan’s second birthday which was pretty special.

“It’s been a month since it happened and Logan is happy and full of life like it never happened, so sometimes it’s hard to believe that it did.”

Logan will be spending Christmas on the New South Wales South Coast with his grandparents and family, and thanks to his love of horses and fishing, Shelley said she will try organise a horseride for her little trooper.

NOVEMBER

As the space between Leora Davis’s lungs and chest filled with fluid, doctors had to surgically install plumbing to stop the young Mackay girl from drowning.

When Andrea and Mathew Davis took their daughter Leora to the doctor they thought she had

contracted Influenza.

In the space of a week, little Leora’s flu had progressed from a standard cough, to pneumonia and then stage three empyema — the worst and final stage of empyema, which causes a thick build-up of pus in an area of the lung cavity called the pleural space.

After an emergency X-ray, doctors in Mackay found almost the entire left side of Leora’s lung

enveloped by the pus, which would restrict breathing if left untreated.

Leora was rushed to the resuscitation room, where she was prepped and sent on a Royal Flying Doctors flight with her father, arriving at Townsville early in the morning where doctors greeted them and talked Mathew through the options.

“Our doctor started running through our options but he said the likely scenario was that he would have to literally cut a hole in the side of her chest and clear her cavity by hand because the fluid inside was so fibrous that suction just wouldn’t work,” Mathew said.

“It was so scary seeing her deteriorate but we had to go with our gut and do what was right for our little girl.”

After the surgery, Leora had drains put into her lungs to clear the remaining fluid and was put on a course of antibiotics, which she is still on today.

However, both parents say they were so proud of how well their daughter handled the situation.

“Even though she was sick, she was so switched on when it came to the medical side of things; she was always asking her doctors questions, negotiating with the nurses which arms they could do blood pressure on that morning, and the nurses and doctors who talked to her about it all were

incredible as well.

“She’s back home now and she’s got the attitude of, ‘okay I conquered this thing, now and it’s going to be part of this life story’ and she’s wearing her battle scars proudly.”

DECEMBER

The Hensley family will celebrate a birthday and a Christmas in hospital but it is small blessings that are keeping them going.

On November 12, Tio Hensley, 14, went to the sick bay at All Souls St Gabriels School in Charters

Towers with a temperature and stiffness in his knee.

Five days later he was transferred from Charters Towers Hospital to The Townsville Hospital with a blood infection originating from an abscess in his hip.

Nina said the cause of the infection was unknown and very nearly claimed Tio’s life.

“Even when he came to the paediatric intensive care unit (PICU) I still wasn’t aware of just how serious it was,” she said.

“We had a couple of days here where it was really touch and go for a while.”

After 16 days in PICU, Tio was moved to the paediatric ward but he and the family still face a long wait until they can return to their 30,000-hectare cattle property at Clermont.

A couple of small gestures from staff in PICU and the Townsville Hospital Foundation are keeping the family smiling despite the situation.

The Townsville Hospital Foundation has pitched in $350 for Tio’s 15th birthday present, a Lego Death Star model, with the rest of the money coming from families and teachers at Capricornia School of Distance Education.

Staff also arranged for Nina and dad Chris to live-stream the graduation of their youngest son

Barney, 11, from CSDE in Emerald on December 6.

“I’ve had three boys go through that school over the past 14 years and it was so nice to be able to be involved in Barney’s graduation even though I couldn’t be there,” she said.