{"id":4201,"date":"2014-04-16T05:00:07","date_gmt":"2014-04-15T19:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/?p=4201"},"modified":"2015-04-29T11:51:12","modified_gmt":"2015-04-29T01:51:12","slug":"charlize-now-looking-towards-a-healthy-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/charlize-now-looking-towards-a-healthy-future\/","title":{"rendered":"Charlize now looking towards a healthy future"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Three-year-old<\/a>
Three-year-old Charlize Napiza with surgeon, Michael Nightingale. Photo courtesy of the Herald Sun.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Words:\u00a0<\/strong>Brigid O’Connell
\nPhotography:<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong>Jay Town<\/p>\n

Doctors at The Royal Children’s Hospital had run out of the answers for one-month-old Charlize.\u00a0In her first four months alive, she would endure 27 operations on her twisted bowel.<\/p>\n

Just hours after Charlize was discharged from the maternity ward she was vomiting green and passing blood.<\/p>\n

Scans at the RCH showed her bowel was twisted, and emergency surgery was needed to untangle the intestines and remove her appendix.<\/p>\n

But over the next week – starting on Good Friday – she deteriorated. In what would be a recurring event, her NICU room was turned into a makeshift operating theatre so Mr Nightingale could remove 49cm of her dead bowel.<\/p>\n

For that first month she teetered on the edge of life and death, with Ms Napiza and husband Sherwin never leaving her side.<\/p>\n

“I’d always talk to her, especially before surgery, telling her; ‘Be strong. Show them how strong you are’,” Ms Napiza said.<\/p>\n

Click here<\/a>\u00a0to read the full story in the Herald Sun.<\/p>\n

To donate to The Royal Children\u2019s Hospital Good Friday Appeal, go to\u00a0goodfridayappeal.com.au<\/a>\u00a0or phone 9292 1166.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Charlize’s first four months alive, she endured 27 operations. Once clinging to life the now three-year-old is a healthy little girl and is expected to have no long term complications.<\/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":[7198],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-good-friday-appeal"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4201","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=4201"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4201\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4205,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4201\/revisions\/4205"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}