Ayrshire family's appeal for help to give daughter chance for normal life
Little Avery Connell has been in intensive care since she was born over a year ago
An Ayrshire couple are pleading for help to give their daughter a chance of a normal life.
Avery Connell was born in February last year and has spent her whole life in intensive care since then, due to a number of complex medical issues.
A traumatic birth for mum Seonaid Gardiner left Avery with a bleed in the brain after she went 22 minutes without oxygen.
Speaking to Clyde 1 News Seonaid said: “The trauma she suffered at birth, it's left her with cerebral palsy and quite complex needs, one of them being the inability to swallow.”
Dad Steven Connell added: “The first year alone Avery has been put on a ventilator over ten times, she's had pneumonia five times, she's had three collapsed lungs.
“She's had to get emergency operations because of how many times she's been put on a ventilator.
“She had to get her throat sort of cut and her air-way rebuilt because it had narrowed so much from scarring from the ventilator.
“All of these have just impacted her massively with respiratory issues and just trying to breath, and the fact she can't swallow has just exacerbated that.”
The couple, who are from Irvine, have been told that there are therapies and treatments that could help Avery learn to swallow but that they are expensive, and unavailable on the NHS. Some aren’t even offered in the UK meaning the family would have to travel to Germany, Hong Kong or China.
Steven said: “The treatment is basically electrical stimulation and there have been quite a few clinical studies. What it does is put electrical probes in the front of the throat and the jawline and sets off small pulses. This is meant to help create a neuropathway, a connection between the brain and these muscles, to then get those muscles to work and start to swallow.”
Steven and Seonaid have set up an online fundraiser in the hope of getting together the vital cash they’ll need to give Avery a fighting chance.
Steven added: “There’s no guarantee it will work but we feel we need to do something because if we leave it too late, until Avery is 3 or 4, the connections will be lost and she’ll never be able to swallow.”
Hear the latest news on Clyde 1 on FM, DAB, smart speaker or the Rayo app.