A mum and dad were asked to kiss their ten-year-old daughter goodbye after an infection spread from her sinus to her brain.
Sarah Calvert and husband Mike feared they had lost their beloved daughter Isabella, known as Bella, three times before she defied the odds and is seemingly pushing for a recovery.
The couple from Prestatyn, North Wales, were enjoying their holiday in Caernarfon as little Bella began complaining about a persistent pain in her head the week prior.
This pain was a precursor of the ‘rollercoaster’ over the coming weeks that saw the parents believe they had lost their daughter on three separate occasions before Bella defied the odds and survived.
Things took a turn for the worse on October 29, in the approach to the Halloween weekend, as dad Mike was at a funeral for his grandad, Bella’s pain got significantly worse.
Sarah said: “Then in the middle of the night when I was helping her go to the toilet, she was dragging one of her legs.
“But we thought it was the flu still, the next morning when we rang 111 - we thought we’ll go into hospital, she’ll get put on a drip, maybe get some antibiotics but it’ll be okay.”
The hospital seemed relaxed about Bella's condition too, with suggestions it might be diabetes. However, as she had a CT scan things started looking worse.
Sarah said: “When they did the CT scan I could tell something wasn’t right because it was near the nurse’s station and more and more people kept coming up and they were discussing things.
“When the nurse came in, she was a bit cagey and said they were still looking at the results, but then they brought me a cup of tea in a real mug.”
She said it was then she knew something was wrong with her little girl.
They told Sarah that Bella had had sinusitis, a common infection that leads to the sinuses swelling up. But it had spread up to her brain and caused an inflammation of the brain’s lining and swelling in her brain.
Bella was put into an induced coma and the family were raced overnight to Alder Hey, in Liverpool.
“They said ‘do you want to come and give her a kiss goodbye?’ That was the first time we thought we might lose her,” Sarah said.
Within hours of arriving, neurosurgeons realised that her brain swelling was far worse than they had originally feared.
To combat this, they removed two parts of her skull from the front of her head to release pressure and allow swelling - after it was removed the doctor described her brain as like a ‘muffin’ bulging out of its case.
So, unable to replace the skull, they put the pieces in a flap in her abdomen, to keep them viable.
Despite initial hopes the surgery had been a success, they quickly realised they had to operate again on the ten-year-old.
Sarah said: “The had this little probe to measure the intracranial pressure, and they like it to be below 15. Hers was 28.”
But after a second brain surgery on the youngster in as many days, doctors faced a tough choice as they needed to get her heart rate down but her blood pressure up.
Sarah said: “So they were doing this constant balancing act of change to gets things about right. But they managed it. There was an incredible nurse who did it.”
Doctors were also worried about pressure on her brain steam, and Sarah and Mike were told "if that's the case, that's that." It was the second time they thought they'd lost their daughter.
Even after the pressure subsided, Bella was far from out of the woods and the next problem to deal with was a blood clot in the brain that doctors described to Sarah as ‘catastrophic’.
Medics were resistant to give her blood thinners, having had so many surgeries, but Bella began stabilising to the point they were able to administer the medicine to deal with the clot.
Once again, things began to look up and they began to remove Bella’s sedation but the youngster showed no signs of being able to breathe on her own.
A family friend began fundraising for them, money Sarah had mentally accepted would go towards Bella’s funeral.
Sarah said: “There was basically no evidence that there was anybody in there. On Monday the nurse said the surgeon was going to have a chat with us and I joked they’d as long as they don’t bring a good cup of tea with you.”
She continued: “I said 'I’m scared you’re going to tell me that there’s no Bella left inside there'. She said it’s very unlikely that Bella will wake up now and if she does, she won’t be Bella. I genuinely felt like she’d died.
“The nurse was so kind, she said we were going to have a lovely girly day. They would wash her hair and paint her nails and they said we could tell other family members who hadn’t seen her to come in and say goodbye.
“I felt like when they were washing her hair, it was how someone would prepare a body. I couldn’t watch them do it.”
This all happened just one day before Sarah celebrated her 37th birthday.
The next day the neurosurgeon was more upbeat about little Bella’s prospects and the next MRI results showed no brain damaged, but a number of problems remained and Bella underwent yet another brain surgery as she battled on.
Doctors removed a section at the back of her skull on Wednesday morning with the neurosurgeon comparing her head to ‘swiss cheese’.
The doctors at the specialist hospital knocked down problem after problem Bella was facing.
After thinking they had lost their daughter three times now Sarah and Mike look ahead to a future where she might be back with them.
The courageous ten-year-old defied the odds and is now breathing on her own, and today was reacting to her dad's voice and opening her eyes to look at him.
“I genuinely feel like she’s been resurrected because I thought she was gone. It’s like watching her rebirth,” Sarah said.
