Millie Kelly was given little chance of surviving her first weeks when she suffered kidney failure after a lifesaving operation. At 6lb 2oz (3.3kg), she was too small to use the NHS dialysis machine that would do the work of her failed kidneys. It was not until Malcolm Coulthard, a paediatrician at the Royal Victoria Infirmary, Newcastle, built the machine that she began to recover.
Millie is now a fit two-year-old and her mother is supporting Dr Coulthard's campaign for hospitals across the country to have dialysis machines for small babies.
Photo from here.
Rebecca Kelly, a 21-year-old student, admitted to misgivings the first time she saw the machine that represented her child's last chance of survival. “It looked handmade in the garage,” she said. “It did not look like it was a professional NHS thing. He had made it out of metal and there were a few paint splodges on it.
Despite its rough-and-ready appearance, it was the product of hours of painstaking work by Dr Coulthard.
Millie was attached to the machine for seven days before she began to show signs of recovery. She had suffered kidney failure after an emergency operation for gastroschisis, a condition that causes the intestines to protrude from an opening near the umbilical cord.
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