PLANE READY FOR SICK GIRL
AN aircraft is on standby at Gold Coast Airport to fly to Thailand and bring sick baby Lilliana Sheridan home.
The eight-month-old was late last night flown from a Phuket hospital to Bangkok where doctors will decide whether to amputate her legs.
Little Lilliana’s parents – Elisha Robinson, 23, and Jai Sheridan, 25, from Nerang – raced her to a hospital in Phuket on Thursday when she contracted meningococcal through septic poisoning.
After reading Lilliana’s story in the Gold Coast Bulletin yesterday, Medical Rescue has offered to fly over and bring her back.
AN aircraft is on standby at Gold Coast Airport to fly to Thailand and bring sick baby Lilliana Sheridan home.
The eight-month-old was flown from a Phuket hospital to Bangkok late last night where doctors will make a decision whether to amputate her legs.
Little Lilliana’s parents – Elisha Robinson, 23, and Jai Sheridan, 25, from Nerang – raced her to a hospital in Phuket on Thursday when she contracted meningococcal through septic poisoning.
Her arms and legs were swollen and black and purple.
The swelling and infection caused nerve damage to her legs and might mean they have to be amputated.
“If they need to take action there they will and if it can wait she will be going home,” Mr Sheridan said yesterday.
Mr Sheridan said the family’s insurance company Zoom confirmed yesterday afternoon it would pay for the medevac to Bangkok and Australia if it was needed.
Before that the family had raised about $12,000 on a Facebook page and almost $10,000 on a Go Fund Me page.
The fundraising efforts had a hiccup on Monday night when Ms Robinson, responding to abusive messages, deleted her Facebook account associated with the donating page.
Facebook shut down the page at the same time as part of its procedures, emailing all donors that their money would be handed back.
However, Facebook said the situation would be rectified.
“Our hearts go out to the family and their efforts to raise important funds for their daughter,” a Facebook spokesman said.
“In this instance, the fundraiser was removed automatically
after the personal account linked to the fundraiser was deleted. We are reaching out to the family and working to rectify the situation with them.”
Mr Sheridan said the money raised would now go towards Lilliana’s rehabilitation.
After reading Lilliana’s story in the Bulletin yesterday, Medical Rescue director Glenn McKay set out to contact her family and insurance company.
Dr McKay said the majority of his medical staff had raised their hands to volunteer to do the trip for free.
“It is good to do good things and this is one of those. I have spoken to the family. As a medical company we have personnel on standby and an aircraft on standby.”
The family has been desperately trying to get Lilliana back to Australia as Thai doctors have been discussing amputating Lilliana’s legs for three days.
Before that doctors did not believe Lilliana would survive the infection.
On Friday, Ms Robinson made a heartfelt plea for people to donate O negative blood as there was none left in the hospital for Lilliana. Within a day more than 1000 people had donated blood to the Red Cross and Lilliana started to improve.
“We’re both just overwhelmed with the help everyone has given us,” Mr Sheridan said yesterday.