I Just Shouted At The Doctor, 'You Need To Save My Baby!'
WOMAN'S WEEKLY|January 23, 2018

Sarah-Louise knew something was wrong with her son. But the doctors couldn't find out what it was. Matilda Battersby reports

 

Matilda Battersby
I Just Shouted At The Doctor, 'You Need To Save My Baby!'

For Sarah-Louise Hall, the stares and ignorant comments from strangers now go unnoticed. She’s used to the attention her son Alfie, nine, draws.

Fed artificially and using a wheelchair, he’s not like other boys his age. But doctors are baffled by his condition and he still doesn’t have a diagnosis, because Alfie is one of thousands of children with SWAN (syndromes without a name). Each year, 6,000 UK children are born with undiagnosed genetic disorders, and their parents have to deal with all the trials of raising a sick child combined with a lack of clear treatment pathway.

‘People look at you like you’ve made up your child’s condition,’ says Sarah-Louise. ‘They say, “There has to be a name for what’s wrong with your child”. Of course. But Alfie’s syndrome is so rare it doesn’t have a name yet. It’s frustrating.’

Sarah-Louise, 43, first realised that something was wrong with Alfie immediately after his birth via a planned C-section on 1 July 2008.

‘The minute he arrived, I couldn’t hear a sound and I just knew something was wrong,’ Sarah-Louise recalls. ‘When my eldest son, Luke, was born, he’d been handed to me immediately. But, with Alfie, there were no cries. Everything went very quiet. I was saying, “Where’s my baby? Where’s my baby?” But they’d taken him away to be resuscitated.’

Sarah-Louise, from Northumberland, suffered a postnatal haemorrhage so, while Alfie was being helped to breathe, she was being worked on by surgeons.

هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة January 23, 2018 من WOMAN'S WEEKLY.

ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.

هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة January 23, 2018 من WOMAN'S WEEKLY.

ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.