'Super Ted' still fighting thanks to Air Ambulance

Nov 22 2009 by Ken Oxley, Sunday Sun

Inside the Freeman, Ted was placed on a life-support machine.

“That’s when we knew it was really serious,” Kay said. “We knew he was really poorly, but we didn’t know it was that bad.”

“You just felt this weight on your shoulders all of a sudden,” Stephen added. “When we were allowed to see him, it was such a shock. He was hooked up to this machine with all these tubes going in and out of him. There were all these screens monitoring him. It’s impossible not to watch them. You want to stop anything going wrong.”

After 10 stable days Ted’s heart stopped a third time.

Kay said: “His doctor, Richard Kirk, was scanning him. Suddenly he jumped on the bed and started massaging Ted’s chest. Then he shouted for the surgeons.”

Again Ted astonished medics by pulling through.

Kay said: “He might need a heart transplant, but to us he’s got the heart of a lion.”

It was four weeks before Kay and Stephen could hold their son again. Even then they were frightened of hurting him. Then this week, for the first time since the start of their ordeal, Ted smiled.

Stephen said: “It’s just heart breaking, just amazing. It was like having the old Ted back.”

For five weeks the parents have taken it in turns to be with Ted and look after his older brother Tom, four.

Kay said: “Tom keeps saying Ted can have his heart if it means he can come home.”

Ted will not leave the hospital until he has a new heart. A pacemaker and drugs have been unable to stabilise his irregular heartbeat, caused by a condition called a arrhythmogenic cardiomyopathy.

Doctors have been unable to find another instance of the illness anywhere esle in the world.

A Berlin Heart machine now has to pump blood round the baby’s tiny body.

It was very final when Dr Kirk told us Ted needed a heart transplant.”

Stephen added: “To realise, as a parent, for your son to live another baby needs to die is so hard. You don’t want that.

“But you have to look at it as something good coming from death. You don’t need your organs when you die, but they can save someone else’s life. They can save Ted’s life.”

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