{"id":3618,"date":"2014-01-06T02:44:27","date_gmt":"2014-01-05T15:44:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/?p=3618"},"modified":"2015-04-29T12:07:38","modified_gmt":"2015-04-29T02:07:38","slug":"the-fight-to-save-jaylee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/the-fight-to-save-jaylee\/","title":{"rendered":"The fight to save Jaylee"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Jaylee<\/a>When eight-year-old Jaylee complained of a sore throat and feeling unwell one Friday morning her mum Tracey kept her home from school, believing it was a common virus that would pass with some rest. However, the following day Jaylee began to go downhill quickly and told her parents she was finding it hard to breathe.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt all happened so fast, Jaylee\u2019s dad called 000 and when the paramedics arrived they had to put a breathing tube in and stabilise her before taking her to hospital,\u201d said Tracey.<\/p>\n

Jaylee was rushed to the nearest hospital and later transferred to The Royal Children\u2019s Hospital (RCH<\/a>) for specialist care. At 3.40am on Sunday morning she went into cardiac arrest and was placed on a heart lung machine called Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation (ECMO<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Professor Igor Konstantinov<\/a>, the cardiac surgeon who placed Jaylee on ECMO that night, said she was at that time in septic shock and was requiring ongoing resuscitation.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe knew that Jaylee was extremely sick and at risk of brain and other organ damage. We needed to get her on to ECMO support that night as soon as we possibly could. This is only possible because the RCH has what we call a \u2018rapid response surgical team\u2019 that allows us to place patients like Jaylee on ECMO at any time of the day or night,\u201d Igor said.<\/p>\n

Tracey said that it was the scariest night of her life. \u201cAt the time we didn\u2019t know if she\u2019d make it through the night, and the hardest part was thinking we\u2019d have to say goodbye to our little girl.\u00a0 The doctors were still searching for what was causing her illness so we still didn\u2019t know why all of this was happening,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

RCH Director of Intensive Care, Associate Professor Warwick Butt<\/a>, said Jaylee was found to have a condition called Group A\u00a0Streptococcus sepsis, a bacterial infection that had poisoned her blood and began to shut down many of her organs, requiring urgent life support.<\/p>\n

\u201cECMO is used at most major centres in Australia and New Zealand;\u00a0 but this specific type of ECMO ( the central \u2018high flow\u2019 technique) used for severe life threatening infections was developed in 2001 at the RCH by the departments of intensive care<\/a>, cardiac surgery<\/a> and cardiac perfusion<\/a>,\u201d said Warwick.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a complicated and difficult technique that requires many different experts to make it work. However we have had great success with this technique in the past; and our results in this situation are the best in the world. We were hopeful that it would work and help save Jaylee\u2019s life,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

After the diagnosis Tracey said Warwick came to see the family and said the team would do everything they possibly could to get Jaylee back home to them. \u201cI\u2019ll never forget that,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cJaylee went through so much, she had two open heart surgeries, multiple seizures, her hands and feet turned black from the infection, she had an enlarged spleen and had to have a tracheotomy<\/a> to assist her breathing.\u00a0 She had to fight so hard to survive,\u201d Tracey said.<\/p>\n

After placing Jaylee on ECMO, cardiac surgeons Professor Igor Konstantinov and Associate Professor Yves D\u2019Udekem<\/a> performed five surgical procedures for Jaylee on Rosella (Paediatric\u00a0Intensive Care Unit) and she remained on ECMO support for almost a month.<\/p>\n

After more than 50 days in intensive care, Jaylee was finally well enough to be transferred to the Sugar Glider<\/a> (Medical Care Ward) where she continued her rehabilitation, which included having to learn to walk, talk and eat again. However, her battle still wasn\u2019t over. One morning her heart rate rapidly increased and she was transferred back to Rosella for further intensive care before transitioning again to Sugar Glider to continue her rehabilitation.<\/p>\n

Over three months since Jaylee was rushed to hospital, she was finally able to return home. \u201cWarwick was right, the team at the RCH did everything to keep her alive and they were able to give us our fairytale ending, we could finally take our little girl home.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cJaylee went from not being able to sit up for longer than five seconds to walking, talking and smiling again,\u201d said Tracey. \u201cThey thought it would take her years to get to where she is now but she\u2019s doing so well, she\u2019s just amazing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"IMG_0929<\/a>
Jaylee with her mum Tracey.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cI would give the doctors my life for what they\u2019ve done, they went far and beyond and I felt so special, the way not only Jaylee but our whole family, was looked after. From the intensive care team to the play therapists, everyone was fantastic, without them she couldn\u2019t have got through what she did, and neither could we.\u201d<\/p>\n

Because of your support, sick children like Jaylee access the very best technology and equipment when they need it most. Your donations ensure families like Jaylee\u2019s are supported using the most advanced tools. To donate visit rchfoundation.org.au\/donate<\/a><\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At eight-years-old Jaylee survived a severe life-threatening infection. After a long battle, and with the help of a world-class intensive care and cardiac surgery team, Jaylee is now on the road to recovery.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":41,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3618","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-in-the-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3618","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/41"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3618"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3618\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3777,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3618\/revisions\/3777"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3618"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3618"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3618"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}