Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
If our prayers are not answered I won’t get to take him home and do what every daddy wants to do: raise a son the best he can
will understand how important it is to make changes to ensure we have a greater chance of saving lives in the future. “I can only hope anyone reading this never goes through what I’m going through right now.”
Dance teacher Sarah, 44, said: “It’s just such a hard message for us to put out. “For what we call a miracle to happen, someone else will have to go through something terrible to give us that gift. No parent in either set of circumstances wants to be there.”
The couple, of South Shields, Tyneside, have been keeping a vigil at their son’s bedside in Newcastle’s Freeman Hospital since he was born on Boxing Day with severe damage to the left side of his heart.
He suffered three cardiac arrests within hours of his birth and is now hooked up to a machine to pump blood around his body.
Chris and Sarah’s son Charlie died in 2013 after being born with a condition that compromised his immune system. It was unrelated to Carter’s illness. The couple have since set up a charity in his name which has helped 59 families of sick children.
But now they need assistance of their own to prevent them having to suffer the loss of another child.
NHS Blood and Transplant, responsible for allocating donated organs in the UK, say there are eight babies under 24 months on the active waiting list for a heart.
The body’s lead nurse for paediatric donation, Angie Scales, said: “We hope Carter gets the heart transplant he so desperately needs.
“Hearts need to be matched by size