It had been several sleepless nights when Lauren Irvine decided to take her daughter Sophia to the hospital. The tot could only sleep upright as she was struggling to breathe.
Within minutes of arriving at the Royal Manchester Children's Hospital, doctors told Lauren, 28, and Sophia's dad, Dale, that she needed to have an emergency tracheostomy.
Little Sophia, then aged four, was placed on a ventilator so that surgeons could insert a windpipe to help her breathe. Nurses later told her terrified parents that by the time they got her on the operating table, she had already began to turn blue.
