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Aaron Vincent needs a new after being struck by rare virus (From The Northern Echo)
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Aaron Vincent needs a new after being struck by rare virus
8:25am Wednesday 23rd December 2009
THE North-East mother of a desperately ill three-year-old last night made an impassioned appeal: “Please help give my son the gift of life this Christmas.”
Aaron Vincent needs a new heart after being struck down by a rare virus.
Doctors say the youngster, from Houghton-le-Spring, Wearside, needs a heart transplant if he is to survive.
Aaron is being kept alive at the Freeman Hospital, in Newcastle, by a mechanical pump called a Berlin heart.
The device is buying him time so that transplant coordinators can find an organ.
Last night his mother, Andrea Middlemass, 34, told of her anguish at waiting for a donor heart to be found.
She said: “Aaron knows something is happening but he doesn’t understand what is going on. I have told him he has a poorly heart and he needs a new one.”
On Christmas Day the family will gather around his hospital bed to give him their love and support.
“I have to stay strong for Aaron,” said Ms Middlemass.
“It is no good if he sees me falling apart. We need him to get well and to come home.”
Despite his illness, his mother says Aaron is “still a happy, cheeky little chappy”
who takes setbacks in his stride.
Aaron was born a normal, healthy boy before being admitted to Sunderland Royal Hospital suffering from a mystery illness.
“They thought it was a really bad asthma attack at first – but he had pneumonia and a collapsed lung, and when they did an ultrasound scan they found out he had an enlarged heart,” his mother said. “It was his first ever visit to a hospital.”
Doctors arranged for Aaron to be transferred to the specialist heart unit at the Freeman Hospital, where it was diagnosed that his heart had been badly damaged by a virus.
Aaron was put on the transplant list and, because of the severity of his condition, specialists decided to support his damaged heart by connecting him to the Berlin heart.
“At least the Berlin heart has made him stable and he can breathe better – it is now just a matter of waiting,” said Ms Middlemass, whose parents, Tom and Christine, and three other children, Nicholle, 15, Sophie, 11, and Callum, nine, are planning to spend Christmas Day with Aaron.
Neil Wrightson, a transplant co-ordinator at the Freeman Hospital, said Aaron is one of five children under 16 who are hoping for a new heart for Christmas.
In an average year, surgeons at the Freeman expect to carry out ten to 16 transplants.
Since April they have performed 12. About 20 adults are waiting for a new heart.
More Health stories
WAITING: Aaron Vincent and his mother, Andrea Middlemass, at the Freeman Hospital, in Newcastle, where the three-year-old is waiting for a new heart
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