Six. Surgery.

We agreed to the surgery and Dr. Colin Bailee (another absolute hero of Alder Hey) had to perform surgery, on our 2-day-old, 5lb8 girl who had to be ventilated and therefore physically moved during surgery. Dr. Colin Bailee possibly had hands bigger than her, her bowel was twisted, and her anatomy so complicated. He operated on that tiny person and he brought her back alive. I mean this blows my mind, honestly, I have no words. (Which is very rare as you know).

Poppy had surgery on 12th November and on 13th November, she had her strongest day (13 has always been our lucky number) and we left that night feeling more positive than before. Poppy’s anatomy was very complicated (Perfectly complicated as I like to say) and if she survived, she would spend a lot of time at Alder Hey.

At birth, she only had one surviving kidney and that kidney had been severely damaged due to reflux during pregnancy caused by the Cloaca Malformation. We were told that babies are too young for dialysis, and they couldn’t tell us how long her surviving kidney would last, it could be a day, it could be 5-10 years, but if it made it to 3 years, she would be able to have a kidney transplant and take one of her families kidneys.

It was a complete unknown, but if it failed before the age of 3, there was nothing that could be done.