By Glasgow Children's Hospital Charity | Glasgow Children's Hospital Charity
We are privileged to have the support of 12 year old Jamie Denvir and his mum Susan, who are backing our Christmas Appeal this year. Susan told us about Jamie's incredible journey, and their reasons for getting involved.
I’m writing to ask for your help this Christmas on behalf of my son Jamie – the bravest boy I know. Jamie started life as an energetic wee boy, a great footballer, loving life and getting out and about. He was never a wee boy who sat inside all the time.
It was October last year when our lives changed forever. One night we were dooking for apples and playing hide and seek in the garden during our annual Halloween party. The next day Jamie was taken to hospital with a sore eye. He wouldn’t come home again until the following June – those were the hardest eight months of our lives.
Eight long months in hospital
Our hospital journey started on the first of November, when doctors found a tumour on Jamie’s brain. We waited for days, fraught with worry while Mr Roddy O’Kane and the neurosurgical team learned all that they could about Jamie’s tumour before operating. On Thursday the 12th of November Jamie went into theatre at the Royal Hospital for Children in Glasgow.
Jamie spent 30 hours in theatre as Roddy and the team worked through the night to save his life. It was a long time for Jamie, a long time for us, and a long time for the surgical team. To be told that they had removed less than 40% of the tumour was hard for us all to hear.
This was just the start of our journey through the hospital, and we spent the next five and a half weeks in the intensive care ward. Jamie’s nerves were damaged following the surgery so he required a tracheostomy, and due to the risk of infection we used to spend long days in the room, never leaving the ward, never leaving his side.
What made this time easier for us was that I could stay with Jamie. I lived in the hospital with him for those eight long months, sleeping on the pull down beds that the Charity has put into every room.
To have the ability to spend the night in the hospital meant that we could have our time next to Jamie when he needed us most, which was incredible as a parent. We became part of the hospital, part of people’s lives.
What was hard was knowing that Jamie’s dad Bobby, sister Kelly and new puppy Mara were still back at home.
Fearing the worst
During this time we had the reassurance that Jamie was getting better, but in April he deteriorated and developed hydrocephalus – a dangerous build-up of fluid on the brain.
Again we were faced with losing him. Our whole family came to the intensive care ward to be with him, but once again Roddy saved his life, inserting a plastic shunt in Jamie’s brain and removing part of Jamie’s cerebellum.
In June this year it was finally time to leave the hospital.
Now we’re back at home life has changed forever. Jamie sleeps in a hospital bed in the living room and Bobby and I take turns to sleep on a mattress on the fl oor next to him. Leaving hospital doesn’t mean leaving the challenges behind.
Jamie’s recovery will be long and hard. We hope that after Jamie’s surgeries he might have a course of radiotherapy or chemotherapy, and once his treatment is finished we can give him the best from life.
Jamie is an amazing boy, he’s our boy and we’re so proud of him. He’s been through so much. There’s a lot we don’t know, and a lot that people can’t tell us.
The surgery doesn’t actually worry me now – it’s the unknown.
Please support children like Jamie this Christmas and help Glasgow Children’s Hospital Charity raise £200,000 for a neurosurgical endoscope.
As a parent who has watched her son battle a brain tumour and hydrocephalus, it’s wonderful to know that Roddy and his team could do even more to help seriously ill children with this equipment.
If you can donate, however small or large the donation may be, you will be helping to save children’s lives.
Thank you.
Susan, Bobby, Kelly and Jamie Denvir
Please support our Christmas Appeal - donate today or text CHILD to 70707 to donate £5. Thank you.
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