Rory would not be here today without the world class experts that are responsible for his care. They have had to make some incredibly difficult decisions when he has been at his most poorly. He was the first child to be put on ECMO in the Cath lab when he became dangerously unstable during the procedure. We were told after his emergency 11 hour Open Heart Surgery, it was unlikely he would of made it through if the awe-inspiring Professor Anderson hadn't used his expertise to create a hole in his heart (which he still has) to reduce the pressure that was leading to heart failure. The intensive care doctors worked through the night trying different drug combinations to keep him stable while they searched for a rare donor human tissue graft which they needed to use in his emergency surgery the next morning. The nurses that found a spare room for me to lie down for a couple of hours, while they looked after Rory, after getting no sleep for days on end. The sister that wheeled a double buggy, with a new born Rory on one side and the SATs monitor on the other, across the hospital from PICU to the post natal ward at 2am in the morning, on the night he was born, so I could see him for a few minutes. It is moments like these when we have to be so incredibly thankful for our NHS and the highly skilled experts we are lucky enough to have working so hard to give these children a future. 

The Evelina Cardiology department has an international reputation for treating heart problems in children. They care for around 6,000 patients each year and deal with the diagnosis and treatment of all kinds of children's heart problems including: