Young liver patient ‘back to normal’
Looking at bouncy Byson Bennett, it is hard to believe his parents were once told to prepare to say goodbye to their youngest son.
One year on from a liver transplant, the four-year-old is happy and energetic.
He loves to play with his older siblings, enjoys music and his toy car, and every day he is learning new skills.
The Christchurch boy received the new liver in December 2015 after a lengthy battle to get him a spot on the transplant list.
Bennett was born with hydrocephalus – commonly known as water on the brain – and was later diagnosed with biliary atresia, a rare liver disorder affecting the tubes that carry bile to the gut.
The condition left him severely jaundiced and in desperate need of a liver transplant.
Doctors at Auckland’s Starship children’s hospital said they would not do the operation, his only chance of survival, because they could not guarantee it would improve his quality of life.
But an early morning phone call changed their lives forever. The conditions for the transplant had changed and Byson was eligible.
It was the best belated Christmas present the Bennett family could have hoped for, and ’’such a blessing’’, grandmother Wendy Dentster said.
The whole family rushed to Auckland and spent six months there following the operation in case Byson’s body rejected his new liver.
He had ‘‘bounced back well’’ but had suffered some complications after the surgery, including three seizures following the operation.
After time in the paediatric intensive care unit and almost a month in a hospital ward, the family celebrated Byson’s fourth birthday with a day out at Ronald McDonald House.
‘‘It look a while for some colour to return to him,’’ his mother, Jasmine Bennett, said, as the jaundice had left him with a yellow skin pigmentation.
But now, Byson was ‘‘back to normal’’. He was able to roll and has gained some independence.
‘‘He is talking more and he has really developed a personality.’’