"At every point we were met with people who genuinely cared"

My 22-month-old daughter is currently an outpatient with ENT; it’s been almost a year since she received a laryngotracheal reconstruction at 8 months old to fix her trachea due to subglottic stenosis. It was a very intense 4-month period of various scopes and procedures, trips back and forth and 3 inturbations in PICU for varying amounts of time. As well as catching multiple viruses on top of this, it was not a good time at all. 

Although we were going through a terrifying time, it was made better by our experience throughout the hospital where every person involved showed a genuine interest in our daughter and we felt her safety was paramount. She was not sent home until they were completely happy with her.

 

I cannot thank every person we encountered in the hospital for making our time easier by showing kindness and compassion, offering cups of tea and comforting me through the particularly difficult times. 

I am grateful every day for my daughter’s consultant, Tash, for taking me seriously and listening to me about my concerns, for regularly checking in with us throughout our stay and keeping us updated with what was happening, explaining it in a way that was clear to understand. I am grateful for the whole ENT team and anaesthetists for the procedures they carried out as there were many, I think my daughter met nearly everyone. 

The theatre staff were amazing and made me feel so at ease. It is not easy watching your baby be sedated and leaving her with people you do not know and waiting for sometimes hours to see her again, however all of the people we met in theatre were so friendly and helpful. 

Everyone in PICU were kind and the atmosphere was bubbly and positive which helped make our times there slightly better. All of the nurses were friendly and chatty and always made sure I was allowed to hold my daughter even with lots of tubes and wires everywhere, they were happy to move things about to let me sit and hold her. 

The staff in 3B were brilliant and even though they were extremely busy they still managed to smile and have a quick chat and it never seemed like any request was a bother - even though it definitely was when I was asking for milk to be heated up several times a day and night. Those quick chats really saved my sanity some days as I was myself with my daughter a lot so the days were long and tiring. 

I had to attend A&E with my daughter once more as she caught bronchiolitis again and I was worried about how she would be after her operation. Again, we were taken seriously and seen relatively quickly. My daughter was checked over and observed over a short period, I was reassured that things were okay. 

I often describe our experience as the ‘best-worst experience’ we could have had because at every point we were met with people who genuinely cared, which had not been our experience prior to attending the children’s hospital.