Brad and Surah Small’s little girl Lauren was not quite six weeks old when a heart attack nearly took her life.
On 29 September 2010, Lauren was spending some time with her grandparents, Shirley and Jim, while her father Brad did some errands and her mother Surah got some much-needed rest. Brad had just left to go to the hardware store, when Shirley went to give Lauren her bottle and noticed that she was yellow and wrinkly. She started to vomit and convulse and as Shirley picked her up she stopped breathing.
“She was like a rag doll in my arms and I knew she’d died.” Shirley said.
“I thought ’how am I going to tell Brad and Surah?’”
Brad remembers arriving back to the house to hear Shirley on the phone to ambulance officers.
“Mum rushed me inside and said ’hurry, it’s Lauren, she’s dying’. I don’t recall thinking anything, I just jumped into action.” Brad said.
Brad immediately started CPR on Lauren while Shirley repeated instructions from the 000 paramedics on the phone.
More than five minutes later—and just before the first ambulance arrived—Brad noticed signs of life in his little girl.
“It was a miracle.” Shirley said.
Lauren was rushed to Mater Children’s Hospital where she underwent emergency cardiac surgery.
Over the next 10 days Lauren’s lungs collapsed repeatedly and her heart stopped another two times—on one occasion for 42 minutes. Doctors worked tirelessly to keep Lauren alive and incredibly the staff succeeded in getting her heart pumping again on both occasions.
Lauren was placed on an ECMO machine (Extra Corporeal Membrane Oxygenation)—a device that takes over the role of the heart and lungs in oxygenating the blood—so that her heart and lungs could rest. However, Lauren’s lungs continued to collapse and doctors made the difficult decision to keep her chest open for several weeks, fearing she was too fragile to endure another surgery. Throughout all of this Lauren was in a chemically induced coma to give her tiny body the best chance of survival.
Slowly, Lauren’s heart got stronger and doctors were able to wean her off the ECMO machine and perform the necessary surgery to close her chest. Even though Lauren’s heart and lungs started to make small improvements, doctors warned Brad and Surah that Lauren was likely to have brain damage.
After six weeks in Mater’s Paediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) Lauren was transferred onto the ward. Miraculously Lauren’s brain was completely unharmed and she was discharged just before Christmas.
Brad and Surah never lost hope for their little girl, sitting by her bedside for up to 22 hours per day. Doctors would even comment to the couple about how positive they both were despite having the sickest child in PICU.
“Lauren was well-known by all the staff. She needed to be cared for by the most experienced staff because she crashed so regularly.” Brad said.
“We just knew that we needed to only bring positive energy to Lauren’s bedside and hoped that if she could hear us that she’d have a reason to wake up and a desire to be with us.”
“Lauren would not have come through all of this without the care of the staff at Mater Children’s Hospital.”