Precious cargo
Children around the country owe their lives to Starship hospital and its air ambulance service. Danielle Clent meets four of them.
testing, but again, results all came back normal.
Before discharge, the team decided to teach Ward and her husband how to perform resuscitation – not thinking they would ever need to actually do it.
‘‘I think we had been home 48 hours and he stopped breathing and we had to resuscitate him at home for the first time.’’
Trying to find a diagnosis for Harry has been a process of elimination. A further three months were spent in Starship in early 2019 trying to figure out what was causing the episodes.
In March, Harry had a tracheostomy – meaning a tube was put into his trachea to create an airway. But in November, Harry pulled the tube out. Tauranga Hospital was unable to put the tube back in and it was decided he would need to be flown to Starship for it to be done under anaesthetic.
Ward says the air ambulance picked them up and took him into the operating room that same night.
She feels ‘‘incredibly lucky’’ the service exists. ‘‘You get a threesecond warning and you’ve got to be fully ready to resuscitate him. You can’t do that on the Hauraki Plains.’’
Ward says the paediatric intensive care unit (PICU) staff who flew down were ‘‘amazing’’ and took over Harry’s care straight away.
PICU nurse Zoe Matsas says Harry’s flight sticks out to her as unique because, although he needed to be taken to Starship quickly, he wasn’t sick enough to need sedation.
The team needed to think outside the box to keep him calm, and realised the best way of transporting him was to do so on his mum’s knee.
Dr John Beca, clinical director of Starship’s PICU and surgical services, says the best way to describe the service is that ‘‘we take the intensive care unit to the child’’.
As well as at least one doctor and one nurse, a mobile ICU with every possible machine that could be needed is loaded up on the plane. This includes breathing machines and pumps for administering various drugs.
If there hadn’t been a way to get her son to Starship, Jessica Anthony says he probably wouldn’t be alive. When Anthony was 17 weeks pregnant, a scan had picked up potential heart problems. Further scans and conversations with Starship worsened Xavier’s diagnosis – he had a range of heart problems, including two large holes.
Anthony was told he would need open-heart surgery shortly after birth and there was a possibility that surgeons may not be able to do anything to help him. Xavier was born via planned caesarean section at Auckland City Hospital on April 27, 2017. At five days old, Xavier had the first of at least three open-heart surgeries.
He stayed in Starship for nine weeks due to an irregular heartbeat and problems with feeding.
His feeding and growth improved by the time he was nine weeks old so the air ambulance was organised to fly the pair back home, with Xavier in an incubator.
‘‘Because he has a heart condition he is really high-risk to getting any infections, so going on a commercial flight was not an option,’’ Anthony says.
The pair stayed in Christchurch Hospital for three days before heading home to be with family. But eight days later, Xavier was rushed back to hospital after catching a cold that quickly turned into bronchiolitis.
Anthony says he was admitted to the high-dependency unit and nearly died after his oxygen levels dropped dramatically and he had a respiratory arrest.
‘‘I’m a nurse at the hospital so being on the other side of that was horrendous,’’ she says. ‘‘I had no control over what was happening. I can’t remember much of the day, to be honest, because it was so traumatic.’’
Because of Xavier’s heart problems, the Starship air ambulance team was again requested to transfer him back to Auckland.
With no specialist children’s cardiologist at Christchurch Hospital, Anthony says it was ‘‘disconcerting’’ and the doctors were very worried about him. ‘‘I truly believe that if he had stayed in Christchurch he probably would have died.’’
Anthony’s husband, James, flew up to Auckland with Xavier while she took a commercial flight to meet them. By then, she didn’t feel scared she was going to lose him because ‘‘he was being taken back to a facility that has specialist care’’.
They stayed in Auckland until
Xavier was four months old, when he had his second open-heart surgery. A week later, he was well enough to fly commercially back to Christchurch.
Now, Anthony says Xavier is doing ‘‘really well’’ and his main symptoms are being short of breath when exercising, and getting blue lips. His oxygen levels still sit lower than normal and are currently about 80 per cent.
An appointment with a cardiologist is booked for September to plan Xavier’s third surgery for this coming summer. He may need a heart transplant in future.
Anthony says the surgery will involve a stent being put in and a stay of four to six weeks in Starship. How he will get back to Christchurch depends on his health after that surgery. ‘‘There’s always a risk or reason that he may need that plane again.’’
Of the 194 missions in 2019, the air ambulance flew to Nelson four times. One of those flights retrieved 11-month-old Mackenzie Gregory.
Mum Jane Gregory says Mackenzie had a high temperature overnight so she booked her in to see their GP, but she deteriorated rapidly.
The GP suggested they head straight to Nelson Hospital, where she deteriorated further and was rushed to the emergency department. She was becoming unresponsive and the medical staff struggled to get any blood or lines into her, having to go through a bone in her leg.
Mackenzie was diagnosed with influenza A and bronchiolitis. It was later discovered she also had a virus and possibly a collapsed lung, Gregory says.
Nelson Hospital staff told her Mackenzie was stable but critical. Neither the Nelson team, nor those at Starship who had been helping over the phone, were comfortable having her there overnight.
The air ambulance came to transfer them to Starship, arriving in Auckland about midnight.
‘‘There was a lot of waiting and worrying in that time, when we were waiting for the flight staff to arrive, but when they did arrive we just surrendered to the process and felt completely supported and that Mackenzie was in the best care possible,’’ Gregory says.
Mackenzie was on an oxygen machine for the duration of the flight and had both a doctor and nurse at her side. She stayed in intensive care for just over a week before moving to a ward, and finally being cleared to go home.
A large proportion of the $1.5m it costs each year to run the National Air Ambulance service is contributed by the Starship Foundation.
‘‘I’m really proud of the fact that we provide a world-class, cutting edge service 24/7,’’ Beca says.
‘‘We wouldn’t be able to do that without having really amazing staff, but we also wouldn’t be able to do it without the support of the Starship Foundation.’’
He says it is always getting busier and it is quite possible a second ‘‘primary’’ plane will be needed in future.
This article is part of Stuff’s partnership supporting the Starship National Air Ambulance appeal – a lifeline for our children when they need it most. Find out more and donate at keepstarshipflying.org.nz.