{"id":7424,"date":"2019-03-28T15:37:30","date_gmt":"2019-03-28T04:37:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/?p=7424"},"modified":"2019-03-28T15:42:26","modified_gmt":"2019-03-28T04:42:26","slug":"double-trouble","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/double-trouble\/","title":{"rendered":"Double trouble"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

A lot of praying, hoping and bargaining can be done in 90\u00a0minutes.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Jayne Wilkins and husband Michael Norman have now endured this scenario for each of their two children in the throes of a medical emergency.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Picture: Jay Town<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

One moment Ms Wilkins was chopping chicken fillets for dinner as she chatted with her nine-month-old daughter, Harriet. The next minute her daughter was convulsing in her high chair.<\/p>\n

It took 20 minutes for paramedics to reach the family at their home in Blighty, a one-pub town in southern New South Wales, while Ms Wilkins cradled her daughter on the lounge room rug in the recovery position.<\/p>\n

The ambulance stopped three times on the 20-minute drive to the nearest hospital, in Deniliquin. The anti-seizure medication should have kicked in, but Harriet was still convulsing when they arrived and would continue for another 20 minutes.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe whole time for her 90-minute seizure I was just hoping she wouldn\u2019t die, that she wouldn\u2019t stop breathing,\u201d Ms Wilkins said.<\/p>\n

The pair were flown that night to Melbourne\u2019s Royal Children\u2019s Hospital, a place better equipped to undertake the tests and treatment needed to quell the seizure.<\/p>\n

The couple had been through this with son Franklin almost two years earlier. Their firstborn, the only baby who slept continuously on the maternity ward but whose tiny hands were tinged blue, was admitted to the RCH at three weeks of age.<\/p>\n

They had never been to the hospital before that. They didn\u2019t know anyone who had. But Franklin was already in heart failure, and 36 hours later the couple handed their son to strangers for heart surgery.<\/p>\n

And while 21-month-old Franklin continues to need regular check-ups at the Parkville hospital for his rare cardiac condition, RCH paediatrician Dr Daryl Efron said he hoped this week-long admission would be a blip on an otherwise healthy childhood for Harriet.<\/p>\n

Most children who have a febrile convulsion \u2014 a seizure caused by a spike in temperature \u2014 will only ever have just one.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are many possible things can cause a baby to have a fit and one of the main things we worry about is meningitis,\u201d Dr Efron said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt turns out she does have bacterial meningitis. It\u2019s relatively mild and she has recovered really quickly. But even mild cases we treat very seriously.\u201d<\/p>\n

After the last doses of antibiotics at the weekend, during which time the family stayed at Ronald McDonald House and were visited by the RCH\u2019s Hospital in the Home nurses, the family are on Sunday night spending their first night at home.<\/p>\n

The family led their town of 400 people in a fundraising drive for the RCH last year, when the senior players of the Blighty Football Club bought a signed Richmond jumper that they raffled off. The Riverina town raised $4300 for the interstate hospital.<\/p>\n

\u201cI never knew how special it was until I got here,\u201d Ms Wilkins said. \u201cIt\u2019s not until you\u2019re here and you have to use it and you depend on it for your children to come home.\u201d<\/p>\n

To donate to The Royal Children’s Hospital Good Friday Appeal please click here<\/a> or phone 9292 1166.<\/p>\n

Words Brigid O’Connell (Herald Sun), photos Jay Town.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Siblings Harriet and Franklin have both been patients at the RCH after experiencing very different emergencies. Nine month old Harriet gave her parents a scare this month after she suffered from a 90-minute long seizure while older brother, Franklin went into heart failure only weeks after birth. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":161,"featured_media":7427,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8971,7198,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7424","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-good-friday-appeal","category-in-the-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7424","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\/161"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7424"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7424\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7432,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7424\/revisions\/7432"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7427"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}