Nicci will never forget the day she walked into her four-year-old son’s bedroom to find him turning blue on the floor.
Despite his tender age, William had suffered a cardiac arrest. Nicci called paramedics and performed CPR for six agonising minutes before they arrived to revive him.
As Nicci looked on, horror-struck, paramedics shocked William’s tiny heart back into a normal rhythm before rushing him to the emergency department at the Sydney Children’s Hospital, Randwick.
William was put into an induced coma and given a ventilator to help him breathe. Although his condition had stabilised, doctors were unable to tell if the cardiac arrest had caused any lasting damage.
Nicci and William’s father Sebastian kept an anxious bedside vigil for five days, unsure if their son would ever wake up.
“Our usually boisterous boy looked so tiny with all the tubes and monitors attached to him,” Sebastian said.
On the fifth day, William was brought out of the coma and, to his parents’ enormous relief, woke up completely a few hours later.
“When his first response was, ‘I want to give mummy a cuddle,’ we knew immediately that our boy was back,” Nicci said.
Doctors discovered that William’s heart problems were the result of a genetic condition.
He underwent surgery the following week to have a tiny defibrillator the size of a matchbox implanted under his ribcage.
If his heart stops again, the device would shock it back into action automatically.
“It’s reassuring to know that if we’re ever out camping or on an airplane, we won’t have to worry about getting to hospital in time,” Nicci said.
The operation went smoothly and William returned home with his family just five weeks after his initial cardiac arrest.
He is back to his usual playful self, and Nicci and Sebastian are thrilled.
“The staff at the Sydney Children’s Hospital have truly shown William the greatest expertise and the best care,” Sebastian said.
William is one of the faces of the Sydney Children’s Hospital’s Gold Week telethon, which will take place on Monday, June 11, to raise money for the hospital. Make your donation now!
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