Please read this story of our about our best friends little girl. This is only a snippet of what they as a family have been through. So proud of all of them and the reason I'm taken on this huge challenge. I am splitting the money with the Bristol Rovers community trust which works with a wide spectrum of the community including health, education and sport projects.

Hi my name is Halle! I was born on 28th August 2019 at 11.04am weighing 7lb 4oz. Shortly after my birth my mummy and daddy noticed that I didn’t want any milk and seemed very bubbly, my midwife just put this down to mucus. Later on that evening I still didn’t want any milk so my mummy and the midwife both tried feeding me. I then started to struggle to breath and was taken to NICU where they put a little oxygen mask on me.

Before I knew it I was taken into the intensive care room and put in an incubator, lots of doctors and nurses gathered around me trying to understand what was happening.

We were told that they suspected that I had TOF (Trachea Oesophageal Fistula) this is where my Oesophagus ends blind and my stomach tube is attached to my wind pipe, when looking at the X-rays they could see that the feeding tube just coiled up and didn’t go anywhere. This condition requires surgery that would need to be done in the next 48 hours. However the consultant didn’t end there, I was also showing signs of having something called VACTERL, when doing my X-rays they also noticed that I had an extra rib and a few were fused together (V in VACTERL stands for Vertebrae defects) The consultant explained all the conditions associated with VACTERL and then went on to say that my anal passage was in the wrong place (A in VACTERL stands for Anal malformation) I would have further tests done before and after my surgery to see if I was showing anymore signs. However at this point my suspected TOF was the thing that needed to be dealt with first.

Thanks for reading my story!
Halle Steele
x

Thank you
Nik