William S's quilt    (Quilt Completed)

Thank you

William's quilt came today and it is really nice, I am putting it in the transplant case so when we get our gift of life I want to lay it on William for good luck and it will be like all the ladies who contributed will have their arms wrapped around him x x x

Finished photos

Individual squares

Fabric

Donated by: Katherine

Biography

William has been poorly since being 2 months old, starting with what the doctors told us was bronchiolitis, but unbeknown to us something alot more sinister was going on with our little boy.

At 17 weeks, William had a berium swallow done to see if he had an opening in his oesophagus and milk was going into his lungs, to see if this was causing all his recurrent chest infections and pneumonias, what this showed us was that William in fact had got malrotation of the gut (meaning his stomach & intestines were the wrong way round). He was whipped to Alder Hey children's hospital in Liverpool the same day & operated on that evening.

William plodded on for a few more weeks but was still vomiting & not eating so we had to tube feed him all the time now. On the next stay in hospital I asked the consultant for a scan on his heart & this is when normal life as we knew it ended.

William's scan showed that his mitral valve was leaking quite badly & would need to have an operation as soon as possible, he had his first ohs (open heart surgery) when he was 7 months old to try & repair the valve. That was the scariest 4 weeks of my life or so I thought.

Ten weeks after William's first ohs, he started to become very unwell again & we went back to Birmingham children's hospital to have him reviewed& they told us that the last op had not been successful & William would need a valve replacement, so William was admitted & had his second ohs exactly 2 months after his first. We took William to theatre & I felt at ease because we had been through this before, but that was worse than ever as William was an extremely poorly boy, after this surgery the doctors were telling us to take minute by minute, not day by day at this stage. Thankfully, Willaim pulled through this surgery, but during this op, William's coronary artery got damaged & has left his heart very impaired & he has very little function on the lefy pumping chamber.

This has resulted in our little man needing a heart transplant which is where we are at the moment. Just waiting til we get our call to give William the gift of life.


Written by Tracey (William's mum)