Olivia's story

Olivia was born on 9th November 2007, six weeks earlier than expected. What seemed to be a happy and healthy baby, soon progressed to a very unhappy and lifeless baby.  Within hours, Olivia developed severe breathing difficulties and was transferred to intensive care at another hospital where she was stabilised and ventilated.  They initially thought Olivia's lungs were not mature enough to cope with everyday life.  As time went by, they sought to remove her from the ventilator – to see how she would cope breathing for herself.  The process of de-drugging her and taking her off the ventilator would turn out to be the most critical path of her life. They gave her three attempts at breathing for herself, and each time she struggled. The process of trying to re-drug and re-ventilate would require her to fight for her life.

Puzzled by her behaviour and having spent three long weeks at the local hospital, she was transferred to GOSH; by this time a very sick little girl.  After a number of weeks there, GOSH gave her a full MOT, and her cardiology results detected an anomaly - an open duct on her heart (something synonymous with prematurity). Finally we were given some hope! Days later they performed surgery to clip the duct closed.  Three days post-surgery, Olivia was challenged to breathe for herself again. Seconds became minutes, minutes became hours, hours became days…finally, Olivia was breathing normally!

After eight weeks in hospital, Olivia came home. Although very jaundiced and underweight, she began to recover.  But something wasn't right, she was very quiet (unusual for a Nugara), and we suspected something was wrong.  Much to our disbelief, we were told she had developed hearing difficulties.  

After some time, Olivia was diagnosed with profound deafness.  Yet again we found ourselves back at GOSH, in search of a solution.  In 2011 and 2012, Olivia was the beneficiary of a right and left side cochlear implant.  Today, at five years old, she has begun hearing at near normal levels, developing speech and language, and is progressing very well indeed.

We are eternally grateful to GOSH.  Without them, we know we would be telling a very different story today.  Without funding, we know continued research and advancements in medical technology would suffer.

OLIVIA’S CHALLENGE =  LIFE
MY CHALLENGE =  LONDON MARATHON
YOUR CHALLENGE = DONATE

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