A miracle Scots kid owes her life to doctors who made her the fourth UK child to have a groundbreaking surgery.
After an open-heart operation in Glasgow when she was just weeks old, Lucy Hunter’s mum Claire, 37, and dad David, 41, didn’t realise worse was to come.
Had it not been for the surgeons at Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) in London, Lucy would not have survived.
Now Lucy’s family is urging Scots to dig deep to assist other youngsters by helping to raise £105,000 to buy two high-tech echocardiogram machines, which take a heart ultrasound.
The life-saving machines picked up Lucy’s problem a year-and-a-half later, showing pressure on her heart.
She was sent to GOSH because there wasn’t a specialist in Glasgow.
Claire, from Uddingston, Lanarkshire, said: “That was a shock in itself but I was saying to them, ‘What can we do to fix her?’ They said there was no cure. I was devastated.
“All I could think was, ‘How long has she got?’ But they couldn’t tell us.
“From then on, every wee milestone Lucy met was so precious.”
Lucy’s condition worsened and by age two the only hope for her was to have a lung transplant or a Potts shunt to help her heart function.
Claire said: “The Potts shunt had only been carried out on three children in the UK, Lucy would be the fourth.”
The shunt means Lucy, now seven, no longer has to have intravenous medication.
She still has regular echo machine check-ups by Gosh medics. Gosh Charity has launched a Vital Equipment Appeal to fund them.
Claire said: “People may wonder why they should raise money for a London hospital but more than half the children treated there are from outside London – including children like Lucy.”
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