Cassandra with mum Rachel at the RCH. Photo courtesy of the Herald Sun.

After battling a mysterious bout of pancreatitis, Cassandra Adams has been reunited with identical twin sister Eleanor to celebrate their third birthday today.

Cassandra left The Royal Children’s Hospital yesterday, flying back to Darwin, where dad Tim said there would be plenty of cake and Easter eggs to mark the occasion.

A fortnight ago, the toddler fell seriously ill, vomiting, grey-faced and lapsing and in and out of consciousness, and had exploratory abdominal surgery at the Royal Darwin Hospital.

A scan later revealed her pancreas, which secretes enzymes to digest food, was the problem and she was flown to Melbourne for treatment.

Words by Marianne Betts.

Click here to read the full story on the Herald Sun website.

Bilal Hassan after open heart surgery at the RCH. Photo courtesy of the Herald Sun.

A footy injury was a blessing in disguise for Bilal Hassan, saving his life.

A sharp-eyed Thomastown Meadows Primary School staffer examining the 10-year-old’s bruised thumb noticed his fingers were blue.

She suggested he go straight to The Royal Children’s Hospital, where doctors discovered he had a hole in his heart and a malformed chamber.

In a five-hour operation on Bilal a fortnight ago, RCH cardiac surgeon Prof Konstantinov repaired the hole, reshaped his malformed right ventricle and reworked some of the plumbing.

The Lalor lad, now expected to lead a full and happy life, went home yesterday.

Words by Marianne Betts.

Click here to read the full story on the Herald Sun website.

Five-week-old Ellie Doyle with dad Martin at the RCH. Photo courtesy of the Herald Sun.

Five-week-old Ellie Doyle’s tooth and nail fight for life is being won.

Her stomach, intestines and part of her liver had slipped into her chest, through a hole in her diaphragm muscle, squashing her lung and pushing her heart over.

RCH director of neonatal medicine Dr Rod Hunt said surgeons operated when she was a week old, pushing her organs back to where they belonged, and repairing the hole with a Gore-Tex patch.

Words by Marianne Betts.

Click here to read the full story on the Herald Sun website.

RCH patient Makayla Mayer. Photo courtesy of the Herald Sun.

Makayla Mayer is about to get out of bed for the first time in 25 days. It is bittersweet for the slight 10-year-old Colac girl who wears her heart on her sleeve. After dislocating the top two vertebrae in her neck five months ago, Makayla has been lying flat on her back in traction at The Royal Children’s Hospital for almost four weeks.

Attached to her head is a halo, and from that a rope disappears over the end of her bed holding a 4kg weight to keep her spine in alignment. She admits it’s been boring but she’s passed the time watching TV and the clock, high up on the wall.

Today, the thought of being upright for the first time in so long is daunting for Makayla. “She’s scared and excited at the same time,” mum Leanne Mayer says.

Mrs Mayer still marvels at how her daughter sustained such a severe injury. It was so inoccuous, no one actually knows how it happened. “She stood in the kitchen one morning screaming in pain, after having a bath and wrapping a towel around her head,” Mrs Mayer says.

Thinking she had pulled a muscle in her neck, Mrs Mayer took her to a chiropractor, a GP and an acupuncturist. They could find nothing wrong with her. The pain went away after a while, but she held her head on a tilt because she had no movement on the left side. Four months after her injury her family GP sent her for a CT scan, which finally picked up her dislocation.

Makayla went straight to Melbourne on February 27, and straight into traction. RCH clinical orthopedics head Mr Ian Torode says: “The vertebrae are meant to twist to a certain degree, but if you go too far the joints dislocate and get stuck out of position.”

On Tuesday Makayla had improved enough to have a halo vest put on, freeing her from her bed and wheelchair, and allowing her to take her first steps in 37 days. She will go home wearing the vest and will keep in on for two months. Five long months after Makayla did whatever she did to injure herself she will have her life back.

Words by Marianne Betts.

Chelsea's brave smile. Photo courtesy of the Herald Sun.

Chelsea Aquilina is quietly happy as she takes her first shaky steps in three months. Leaning on a bed the five-year-old takes a few sideways steps in one direction and then back again. Her left leg, which is much weaker than her right, is being partly supported by one physiotherapist, and her hips by another.

They may be tiny, shaky steps, but for Chelsea they are momentous strides towards her recovery.

She was not expected to survive when, just before Christmas, she was hit by a ute and suffered severe head injuries.

When she arrived at The Royal Children’s Hospital that night, neurosurgeon Patrick Lo says “she was extremely critical and very close to death”.

Mr Lo adds simply: “She should not be alive, she’s such a star.”

The right side of her brain was bruised and haemorrhaging and she had emergency surgery to relieve the pressure, Mr Lo says. A large clot and a piece of Chelsea’s skull were removed to give her swelling brain more room.

Over the following days Chelsea clung to life by a thread, and doctors warned her distraught family she could have a cardiac arrest at any moment. “If she arrested they weren’t going to resuscitate because there was already too much brain damage,” Mrs Aquilina says. “If they had to resuscitate, it would cause more damage, and it wouldn’t be fair to her.” But the Melton youngster kept rallying.

Mrs Aquilina says altogether her little girl has had eight or nine operations. Mr Lo says: “She’s a fighter, that girl. Her family had a lot to do with it, too. They never gave up.”

Mr Lo says Chelsea will be permanently weak on the left side of her body, but he expects her to start walking again in coming months. “It’s more than likely she’ll start walking bit by bit, but she’ll always have a limp on her left side,” he says. Mentally she may have have memory problems, suffer headaches and epilepsy or seizures, but “we are extremely optimistic about her”.

She is expected to make most of her gains in the first year after the accident, but to keep improving over the next five years.

If her first few months are anything to go by, nothing will hold Chelsea back from a bright future.

Words by Marianne Betts.

Little Zachary Kelly can finally go home after spending his whole life at the RCH. Photo courtesy of the Herald Sun.

After spending his entire life at The Royal Children’s Hospital, Zachary Kelly defied the odds and went home last week.

The little fighter was born with a devastating condition, where parts of the left side of his heart did not form properly. The condition, known as hypoplastic left heart syndrome is so rare that just a dozen babies a year, from all over Australia, are treated for it at the RCH.

RCH cardiac surgeon Associate Professor Yves d’Udekem says babies with this condition are born without or with a very small left ventricular cavity, which is the chamber that pumps blood from the heart around the body.

Zachary’s illness was picked up in a routine scan 22 weeks into Mrs Kelly’s pregnancy, and she moved from Adelaide to Melbourne to give birth. Born at the Royal Women’s on November 30, he was transferred straight to the RCH, on the day the new hospital opened.

At two days old Assoc Prof d’Udekem and his team performed the first of three operations needed to save Zachary’s life.

Zachary’s illness was at the worst end of the spectrum because as a fetus, for reasons not fully known, a valve in his heart was completely blocked, leaving the walls of his main pumping chamber so thick, making it difficult for his heart to move well, Assoc Prof d’Udekem says. After his first operation Zachary’s heart was so weak he had an artificial heart doing its work for four days.

Mrs Kelly says: “They didn’t think he’d come off the (heart) machine … but he surprised them.”

The Kellys very nearly lost Zachary in the following weeks when he suffered a cardiac arrest. Assoc Prof d’Udekem says: “His heart was a big concern … for a long time we were not thinking that he would make it.”

“So there’s been a couple of times we’ve nearly lost him, but he’s a fighter, he’s a strong little boy, he keeps hanging in there,” Mrs Kelly says.

And with a name like his, why wouldn’t he? Zachary means remembered by God. “We wanted a really strong name, and Zachary is just that, we’d expect nothing less from him,” she says.

And he has lived up to his name. Since his last brush with death, he hasn’t looked back, going from strength to strength.

Words by Marianne Betts.

Two-year-old Aston Crow plays with his teddy at the RCH. Photo courtesy of the Herald Sun.

Aston Crow has been playing a waiting game that is nearly over.

The two-year-old is on the brink of a life-saving bone marrow transplant that will cure him of the rare leukaemia that has plagued him for more than eight months.

His five weeks so far at the Royal Children’s Hospital began with five days of chemotherapy to start preparing him for his risky transplant.

And since then doctors have been waiting for his little body to recover so he is strong enough to undergo a second round of chemotherapy, followed swiftly by the transplant, later this month.

RCH children’s cancer centre transplant head Dr Francoise Mechinaud said “He’s adjusting very well, he’s very well supported by his parents … he’s not scared, he is a happy child”.

Words by Marianne Betts.

Click here to read the full story on Aston on the Herald Sun website.

Rowell Arnephy with sister Andrea and brother Rowan at the RCH. Photo courtesy of the Herald Sun.

Skateboarder Rowell Arnephy is all smiles after a miraculous escape when he was hit by a van crossing a road in Cranbourne North on Tuesday.

The 12-year-old is recovering in the Royal Children’s Hospital after sustaining an injury to his left eye, bleeding from an ear and grazes to his back and face.

RCH neurosurgical resident Dr Ella Ellwood-Shoesmith said the extent of Rowell’s injuries were being assessed. She advised skateboarders to wear helmets for protection.

Words by Marianne Betts.

Click here to read the full story on the Herald Sun website.