Latest / Tom's Hirschsprung's Podcast / Episode 126 - With Laura Rigg
Transcript
- 0:02Speaker 1: You are listening to Tom's Hirshprung's podcast, a space where
- 0:05Speaker 1: we talk openly about living with hirshprng's disease. Whether you
- 0:09Speaker 1: live with it, care for someone who has it, or
- 0:12Speaker 1: just want to understand more, this podcast is for you.
- 0:15Speaker 1: Each episode, we will explore real stories and honest conversations
- 0:19Speaker 1: about a condition that often goes unheard. Thank you for
- 0:22Speaker 1: tuning in.
- 0:43Speaker 2: Hello, and welcome to episode one hundred and twenty six
- 0:46Speaker 2: of Tom's Hirshbrons podcast. I'm delighted this afternoon to be
- 0:50Speaker 2: joined by Laura. Laura, welcome to the podcast.
- 0:53Speaker 3: Thank you so much, and thank you so much for
- 0:56Speaker 3: inviting me to share our hirshprgs story.
- 1:00Speaker 2: Yeah, and what a story it is. I know, we'll
- 1:02Speaker 2: get into it. We'll get into it a little bit.
- 1:05Speaker 2: But yeah, this is not your typical diagnosed with hirshprungs.
- 1:11Speaker 2: And then everything sort of jogs along, absolutely fine. There
- 1:14Speaker 2: seems to be an awful lot to this story. So
- 1:18Speaker 2: with that being said, would you like to take us
- 1:21Speaker 2: sort of well back to the very beginning.
- 1:25Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely so. July twenty twenty three, I gave birth
- 1:31Speaker 3: to my daughter, Harriet and had a really easy pregnancy
- 1:35Speaker 3: to be fair, like it was my first pregnancy. Everything
- 1:37Speaker 3: was really chill, had no issues, nothing came upon any
- 1:42Speaker 3: scans that we had, There was no sign of any
- 1:44Speaker 3: kind of trouble so to speak. I was very very overdue,
- 1:49Speaker 3: so she did not arrive until I think eleven days
- 1:54Speaker 3: after her due date, and I was in hospital five
- 1:58Speaker 3: days prior to her being born because she was that
- 2:01Speaker 3: stubborn that she just did not want to come out.
- 2:03Speaker 3: They really tried everything and she just was having none
- 2:06Speaker 3: of it, so eventually ended up in an emergency sea section.
- 2:11Speaker 3: So obviously the lead up to the berth was all
- 2:13Speaker 3: quite traumatic, and there was a lot going on, lots
- 2:15Speaker 3: of medical interventions, and obviously when you've not had a
- 2:18Speaker 3: baby before, it's just very like well, you know. But
- 2:22Speaker 3: she arrived and she was gorgeous. She was tiny, but gorgeous.
- 2:26Speaker 3: I think she was six pounds eight ounces, which is
- 2:28Speaker 3: quite small for a very very overdue baby. But all
- 2:34Speaker 3: seemed fine sort of those first few hours after birth,
- 2:38Speaker 3: and then throughout the day we were having difficulty feeding her.
- 2:43Speaker 3: So anytime she had knee like milk or colostrum, it
- 2:46Speaker 3: just kept coming back up and it was kind of
- 2:48Speaker 3: like this, like bright green color, and a few of
- 2:51Speaker 3: the pediatric doctors looked at her and just said, oh,
- 2:54Speaker 3: it's just mucus from the sea section. You know, she'll
- 2:58Speaker 3: be fine, it's just going to clear out. And I
- 3:02Speaker 3: don't really remember a lot from that day because I
- 3:04Speaker 3: was so out of it. I was so tired, and
- 3:07Speaker 3: I just remember during the night the midwives taking her
- 3:10Speaker 3: away for a little bit and trying to get her
- 3:14Speaker 3: to feed on some formula and it just wasn't happening.
- 3:17Speaker 3: Anything that went in came straight back out. And she
- 3:21Speaker 3: also hadn't passed any picconium at this point either. So
- 3:25Speaker 3: the next day a new midwife came onto the ward
- 3:29Speaker 3: hadn't seen it before. Her name was Jane, and she
- 3:33Speaker 3: kind of looked at what happened overnight and she said
- 3:35Speaker 3: something's not right here, like I'm not happy. And I
- 3:40Speaker 3: overheard her actually on the phone speaking to I guess
- 3:43Speaker 3: the pediatric registra or something, saying you will send a
- 3:46Speaker 3: different doctor to come and look at this baby because
- 3:48Speaker 3: I'm not happy with the one that has looked at
- 3:50Speaker 3: her before. So yeah, it was all a bit of
- 3:53Speaker 3: a whirlwind. A different doctor came down and then immediately
- 3:59Speaker 3: took her over to the Special Care Baby unit. And
- 4:04Speaker 3: so this was at York Hoster by the way, where
- 4:07Speaker 3: she was born, and so they don't have a nick
- 4:09Speaker 3: you at or they just have the Special Care Baby unit.
- 4:14Speaker 3: And they took her and we had no idea what
- 4:16Speaker 3: was going on, and we waited for what felt like hours,
- 4:20Speaker 3: and eventually they got wheeled over to a special Care
- 4:25Speaker 3: Baby unit and they said, there was something wrong with
- 4:29Speaker 3: babies intestines. We're not too sure what it is, but
- 4:33Speaker 3: we can't treat it here. So Harriet was loaded up
- 4:38Speaker 3: into this massive kind of like I don't even know
- 4:41Speaker 3: what you would call it. It was. It was like
- 4:44Speaker 3: a bed, but it was like a big kind of
- 4:45Speaker 3: like machine almost, and they popped her in there for
- 4:49Speaker 3: transport and took her over to Leeds General Infirmary. Now
- 4:55Speaker 3: at this point, I'm, you know, thirty six hours on
- 4:59Speaker 3: from emergency section, not very mobile, not feeling great. But
- 5:05Speaker 3: I said, there's no way I'm staying in York. I'm
- 5:07Speaker 3: going to Leeds, you know, where my baby is. And
- 5:09Speaker 3: the middle drives are a bit like, we don't think
- 5:11Speaker 3: you're well enough to go, and I was like, I
- 5:14Speaker 3: don't care I'm going, and I think they tried to
- 5:18Speaker 3: do every test they could to kind of keep me there,
- 5:20Speaker 3: but luckily everything came back where they kind of said, well,
- 5:24Speaker 3: you know, we can discharge you, but you know, you
- 5:28Speaker 3: need to take it easy. So this was sort of
- 5:32Speaker 3: like the evening by that point, and my husband drove
- 5:36Speaker 3: us over to Leeds. So from York that's about a
- 5:38Speaker 3: forty minute drive. It felt like the longest drive in
- 5:41Speaker 3: the world. After having major surgery. We got over to
- 5:46Speaker 3: LGI found Harriet. She was on the surgical newborn ward
- 5:53Speaker 3: and we got there and they said, look, we're not
- 5:55Speaker 3: sure what it is, but we think it could be
- 5:58Speaker 3: this thing called Hirshbrus disease. Me and my husband are like,
- 6:02Speaker 3: what is that. You know, we've never heard of it.
- 6:05Speaker 3: You know, it's not in our family, it's not something
- 6:09Speaker 3: that we're familiar with. And I think that night, I
- 6:13Speaker 3: think just all the emotions and the adrenaline, and because
- 6:17Speaker 3: it was nighttime, we just didn't have a chance to
- 6:19Speaker 3: speak to anybody about it or to understand, you know,
- 6:22Speaker 3: what hirshbrums was. And I just remember they put us
- 6:26Speaker 3: in this little side room just off the ward, and
- 6:30Speaker 3: my husband and I we just cried because we just
- 6:32Speaker 3: you know, we were so scared. We thought, you know,
- 6:36Speaker 3: were we going to lose her. We just had no
- 6:38Speaker 3: idea what was about to begin. Because that really was
- 6:43Speaker 3: just the very start of it. And yeah, she was
- 6:46Speaker 3: kept in LGI for we think about two and a
- 6:49Speaker 3: half weeks. She was put on bow washouts to clear
- 6:53Speaker 3: the stool out from her bowl, and basically it was
- 6:56Speaker 3: just a case of getting her feeding and comfort so
- 7:00Speaker 3: that she could come home with us and we could
- 7:02Speaker 3: continue to do the bow washouts from home. So yeah,
- 7:07Speaker 3: so that was just that's just the start.
- 7:09Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean that sounds again, I can't imagine how
- 7:17Speaker 2: people feel when you go in then, Yes, you said
- 7:21Speaker 2: Harriet was slightly overdue, but we go in and you
- 7:25Speaker 2: sort of expect a normal quote unquote, you know, having
- 7:29Speaker 2: had a normal pregnancy, and you expected then for just
- 7:35Speaker 2: the entire world to be to the top side down.
- 7:38Speaker 2: I mean, I can't imagine how that must feel.
- 7:42Speaker 3: Absolutely, and you know, it really did feel like the
- 7:44Speaker 3: whole thing just had turned completely upside down. And I
- 7:49Speaker 3: think as well, with kind of very new diagnoses, I
- 7:53Speaker 3: think surgeants are quite reluctant to kind of have those
- 7:56Speaker 3: realistic conversations with you at that point. So I remember
- 8:00Speaker 3: kind of, you know, having in my head that oh, well,
- 8:02Speaker 3: she would just have a bit of surgery and you know,
- 8:05Speaker 3: everything would be hunky dory. And obviously you know that
- 8:09Speaker 3: that wasn't the case. And I know now from you know,
- 8:11Speaker 3: experience and seeing other people's stories, that that isn't very
- 8:16Speaker 3: often the case. That you know, it's surgery and then
- 8:19Speaker 3: you know, you know, everything's normal. And I don't like
- 8:21Speaker 3: to use that word, but that's kind of you know,
- 8:23Speaker 3: where we're at. So yeah, so we you know, we
- 8:27Speaker 3: kind of went home and adjusted to life with bow washouts.
- 8:33Speaker 3: They I mean they were okay, she coached with them,
- 8:36Speaker 3: Well we coach with them. Okay, it's you know, weird
- 8:39Speaker 3: thing to do, but you just kind of get used
- 8:42Speaker 3: to it and that just becomes what's normal for you.
- 8:46Speaker 3: But it did restrict us quite a lot. You know
- 8:48Speaker 3: that we have to kind of plan you know, if
- 8:50Speaker 3: we went anywhere, it would have to be around washouts.
- 8:53Speaker 3: We couldn't you know, let other people look after her
- 8:56Speaker 3: for any sort of extended period because they weren't trained
- 8:59Speaker 3: in washout. So and it felt like quite an isolating experience,
- 9:03Speaker 3: because how do you explain to your friends that have
- 9:07Speaker 3: babies that this is something that you're doing. And I
- 9:12Speaker 3: think both of us at the time probably didn't talk
- 9:15Speaker 3: about it a lot because we didn't know how, and
- 9:19Speaker 3: I think people as well don't really know how to
- 9:23Speaker 3: talk about it without feeling awkward. So yeah, I think
- 9:27Speaker 3: it was quite isolating in those early days, just overwhelming
- 9:32Speaker 3: with all of a sudden having to a care for
- 9:35Speaker 3: a child just generly, and then be all these additional
- 9:39Speaker 3: things that you had to do, you know, that made
- 9:42Speaker 3: it even more complex. But we continued with the washouts
- 9:48Speaker 3: until Harriet was about three months old, and one day
- 9:52Speaker 3: the washouts just stopped working. We were getting no results
- 9:55Speaker 3: from the bow washouts, no store was coming out, no guests.
- 9:59Speaker 3: So we rang Stone nurses at LGI. They said to
- 10:03Speaker 3: bring her in they'll have a little look, and basically
- 10:07Speaker 3: Harriet was just submitted until they could get a result
- 10:10Speaker 3: from the washouts. But I think we were in for
- 10:13Speaker 3: about a week trying the washouts with the Stone nurses,
- 10:16Speaker 3: with the surgeons. They're trying to figure out what might
- 10:19Speaker 3: be going on, and you know, they couldn't figure it out.
- 10:24Speaker 3: They thought it could be Entricholitis, but that there just
- 10:26Speaker 3: wasn't enough kind of evidence to suggest what was going on.
- 10:30Speaker 3: But Harriet was getting more poorly, obviously not being able
- 10:34Speaker 3: to clear everything out, and so they scheduled her for
- 10:38Speaker 3: an iliostomy, and then the morning that she was due
- 10:43Speaker 3: to have the iliostomy, she tested positive for COVID sir,
- 10:50Speaker 3: so they had to cancel the surgery, obviously with her
- 10:52Speaker 3: being such a small baby, and the anstis was not
- 10:55Speaker 3: prepared to continue, which is obviously the right decision, but
- 10:59Speaker 3: at the time we were just we've got ourselves so
- 11:01Speaker 3: geared up, you know, for preparing for the surgery, and
- 11:05Speaker 3: then you know it wasn't going to happen. And I
- 11:07Speaker 3: also caught COVID at the same time, so we got
- 11:11Speaker 3: isolated in this tiny little side room on the ward,
- 11:16Speaker 3: just me and Harriet both had COVID, both feeling absolutely awful.
- 11:20Speaker 3: It was a horrible experience and definitely don't recommend it.
- 11:25Speaker 3: But by some miracle, the washouts started working again, so
- 11:30Speaker 3: I think the plan was to kind of delay the
- 11:32Speaker 3: surgery until she was well, but it got to a
- 11:35Speaker 3: point where we were back to regular washouts. The outcomes
- 11:39Speaker 3: was expected and they were quite happy for her to
- 11:41Speaker 3: be discharged back home, and we carried on as normal
- 11:46Speaker 3: for another few months, and then at six months she
- 11:50Speaker 3: got very unwell again and we took her in and
- 11:55Speaker 3: the surgeon just said, we need to put her into
- 11:58Speaker 3: emergency surgery because you know, she's very sick, and it
- 12:01Speaker 3: was entricolitis, and it, you know, it just makes the
- 12:05Speaker 3: kids so unwell. And their best course of action was that,
- 12:09Speaker 3: you know, to kind of get the iliostomy done now
- 12:14Speaker 3: to prevent this kind of happening again. So she had
- 12:17Speaker 3: the surgery and she did really well. She recovered really quickly.
- 12:21Speaker 3: I think we were admitted and discharged within about seven
- 12:25Speaker 3: days so, and she was an absolute trooper. And we
- 12:29Speaker 3: kind of noticed as her parents that once she'd had
- 12:32Speaker 3: that surgery, she actually seemed a lot brighter. She just
- 12:35Speaker 3: looked healthier. So I think, you know, I still stand
- 12:39Speaker 3: by it. It was the best thing that I think
- 12:41Speaker 3: could have happened for Harriet at that time, and I
- 12:44Speaker 3: think it was the right thing to do just in
- 12:47Speaker 3: terms of getting her to a point where she could
- 12:49Speaker 3: be be well, because these recurrent entricolitis episodes were delaying
- 12:53Speaker 3: her having a pull through surgery, which is kind of
- 12:57Speaker 3: what the goal that we were always working towards was.
- 13:01Speaker 2: Yeah, most definitely. And when the entricolitis happened a second time,
- 13:08Speaker 2: did you recognize the signs earlier at that time?
- 13:13Speaker 3: Honestly no. And I think entercolitis is so tricky because
- 13:19Speaker 3: even the medical professionals themselves can't accurately diagnose it. They
- 13:24Speaker 3: just kind of go on best guests. So they'll look
- 13:27Speaker 3: at the x rays, they'll look at you know, blood cultures,
- 13:30Speaker 3: and they'll say it's likely entricolitis, but you know it,
- 13:34Speaker 3: every child presents differently as well. So Harriet doesn't tend
- 13:37Speaker 3: to get a temperature. She's never been a child that
- 13:40Speaker 3: gets temperatures. But you know, we we spot science like
- 13:45Speaker 3: the vomiting that's always one that she gets. And now
- 13:48Speaker 3: that she has the IELs to me, you know, the
- 13:50Speaker 3: kind of watery output, those kind of are the key
- 13:52Speaker 3: indicators that something's not quite right. But then you know,
- 13:55Speaker 3: those are also the symptoms of so many other conditions
- 14:00Speaker 3: and illnesses for children, so it's really difficult to know
- 14:03Speaker 3: what you're dealing with. So we always just kind of
- 14:06Speaker 3: act cautiously and as soon as there's a sign of
- 14:10Speaker 3: something not being quite right. You know, we always contact
- 14:13Speaker 3: the hospital, the stonin urses get some advice and generally
- 14:17Speaker 3: they say to bring her in. Definitely.
- 14:20Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it's a it's such a difficult condition,
- 14:25Speaker 2: Like you say, it's such a difficult condition to diagnose
- 14:28Speaker 2: because it could be so many other things. Yeah, so
- 14:31Speaker 2: many other things. And I guess one point that we'll
- 14:36Speaker 2: touch on that I can't remember if we mentioned yet already,
- 14:40Speaker 2: but that Harriet is total colonic her struts. That wasn't
- 14:45Speaker 2: necessarily what they thought it was going to be originally,
- 14:49Speaker 2: is that right.
- 14:50Speaker 3: Yeah, So we didn't find out that she was total
- 14:54Speaker 3: chronic until she was about nine months old, where she
- 14:58Speaker 3: finally got to appoint the last me was working super
- 15:01Speaker 3: well for her. She was really healthy, really happy. She
- 15:04Speaker 3: put on quite a bit of weight as well, and
- 15:06Speaker 3: that was something that they'd always been a bit kind
- 15:08Speaker 3: of cagey about. She was a small baby anyway, and
- 15:11Speaker 3: she was slow to kind of grow any weight. But
- 15:15Speaker 3: she got to the point where she was really healthy
- 15:17Speaker 3: and they said, okay, let's do the pull through. Let's
- 15:21Speaker 3: see how it's going. And they took her down for
- 15:26Speaker 3: surgery and during the surgery they biopsied her colon and
- 15:32Speaker 3: the way they do it at Algi is really weird
- 15:35Speaker 3: because they have to take the biopsy, put it in
- 15:38Speaker 3: a taxi and send it over to Saint James's Hospital
- 15:42Speaker 3: to their lab while she's like open for surgery and
- 15:47Speaker 3: wait for them to call back with the results. So
- 15:48Speaker 3: this went on for quite some time because they were
- 15:51Speaker 3: back and forth between the two hospitals, and you know,
- 15:55Speaker 3: they said, it's going to be a long surgery. Just
- 15:57Speaker 3: you know, take some time afterward, go out for the
- 15:59Speaker 3: day so my husband to die. You know. Leads to
- 16:02Speaker 3: a great city. We love it there, and we just
- 16:05Speaker 3: sort of went on a bit of like a coffee
- 16:06Speaker 3: shop tour. There's loads of good coffee shops. Obviously we
- 16:10Speaker 3: were so anxious, so we couldn't really enjoy ourselves, but
- 16:12Speaker 3: we were just kind of like hopping around these coffee
- 16:14Speaker 3: shops for a couple of hours and then they called us,
- 16:17Speaker 3: I think about lunchtime, and they said, we have stopped
- 16:21Speaker 3: the surgery. Can you come back to the hospital and
- 16:24Speaker 3: we'll explain what's going on. They said, Harry, it's asolutely fine,
- 16:27Speaker 3: but we can't continue. So of course, obviously our minds
- 16:31Speaker 3: are just we're just thinking what on earth has happened?
- 16:34Speaker 3: Because I don't think it ever occurred to us at
- 16:36Speaker 3: that point that they wouldn't be able to do the
- 16:39Speaker 3: pull through surgery. So we got back. Surgeon set us
- 16:44Speaker 3: down and basically said, look, we have biopsied pretty much
- 16:49Speaker 3: all her colon except for five centimeters, and none of
- 16:52Speaker 3: it is viable. It's a ganglionic. And he said, I
- 16:56Speaker 3: think we are looking at you know, total chlonic hirshbrings disease.
- 17:00Speaker 3: And he said that wasn't what we expected because she'd
- 17:03Speaker 3: had successful washouts for the most part, you know, for
- 17:07Speaker 3: six months before the ilostomy, So it was kind of
- 17:11Speaker 3: a shock to everybody. But I guess, you know, you
- 17:14Speaker 3: don't know what you're dealing with until you get in
- 17:17Speaker 3: there and you the biopsies and see what happened. So
- 17:21Speaker 3: that really kind of flawed us because we thought, well, well,
- 17:24Speaker 3: what happens now? Where does that? Where does that leave her?
- 17:29Speaker 3: And basically the plans then to just keep the iliostomy
- 17:32Speaker 3: as it is, work on getting the output to be
- 17:36Speaker 3: a lot thicker so that when they revisited pull through
- 17:40Speaker 3: again a little bit later on the when she has
- 17:45Speaker 3: the pull through astona reverse the stool that comes out
- 17:48Speaker 3: is going to be a little bit thicker and isn't
- 17:51Speaker 3: going to cause as many issues sort of like with
- 17:53Speaker 3: the you know, the nappy rash and things like that.
- 17:56Speaker 3: So that was kind of where we left things when
- 17:59Speaker 3: she was nine months old, and then I would say
- 18:02Speaker 3: the year after that I could only describe as just
- 18:05Speaker 3: absolute hell. We had so many issues initially with the
- 18:12Speaker 3: iligostomy and leaks and not being able to find the
- 18:15Speaker 3: right products and just really struggling. You know, there'd be
- 18:20Speaker 3: days where we would be doing five or six bag
- 18:22Speaker 3: changes a day and it would you know, you'd put
- 18:26Speaker 3: one on and then half an hour later it would
- 18:28Speaker 3: it would go again, and you just think, oh, my gosh,
- 18:30Speaker 3: what are we doing wrong? Why is it not working?
- 18:33Speaker 3: And obviously when you're sort of you know, nine months
- 18:35Speaker 3: old babies are you know, a lot less docile than
- 18:39Speaker 3: newborn babies, So that added an extra layer of kind
- 18:42Speaker 3: of obsessed to it. And then, pretty much like clockwork,
- 18:47Speaker 3: for the next year, every three months Harriet got entricolitis,
- 18:51Speaker 3: even with the stoma, and well they say entricolitis, We
- 18:57Speaker 3: don't know, it could have been tummy bugs. It's it's
- 19:00Speaker 3: so hard to kind of tell exactly what they're dealing with.
- 19:02Speaker 3: But she's always been treated as somebody that has kind
- 19:06Speaker 3: of chronic and chocolitis, and yeah, pretty much you could
- 19:10Speaker 3: set your watch to it. You know, it would be
- 19:12Speaker 3: three months and we'd be back and again vomitsying, the diarrhea,
- 19:16Speaker 3: et cetera. There was one time October twenty twenty four
- 19:21Speaker 3: where she did have a tummy bug, and we know
- 19:23Speaker 3: that because the rest of us caught it. Okay, well,
- 19:28Speaker 3: so she was sick in hospital. I was with her
- 19:31Speaker 3: and got sick myself. I just have a memory of
- 19:35Speaker 3: lying on you know, like the little like pull out
- 19:38Speaker 3: chair beds that they have in the hospital, lying on
- 19:41Speaker 3: their feeling absolutely awful and not being able to get up,
- 19:45Speaker 3: while a bunch of nurses were trying to sort Harriet's
- 19:47Speaker 3: canular out because she'd pulled it out, and you just think, oh,
- 19:50Speaker 3: my gosh, like what even is my life that this
- 19:52Speaker 3: is happening. And the cherry on top of the cake
- 19:55Speaker 3: was that we were actually trying to move house at
- 19:56Speaker 3: this point, so we were really catering to Tea Side,
- 20:00Speaker 3: So we were packing all our stuff up in York
- 20:02Speaker 3: relocating to Teesside. My husband got sick so had to
- 20:06Speaker 3: pack up the entire house by himself because nobody could
- 20:08Speaker 3: help him because obviously they would catch, you know, the bug.
- 20:13Speaker 3: And it is one of those things. I look back
- 20:15Speaker 3: at it now and obviously I can laugh, but you
- 20:16Speaker 3: just think, how did we get through that? Because you know,
- 20:19Speaker 3: house moves are stressful at the best of times, but
- 20:21Speaker 3: then you know you've got a Todler in hospital, everybody
- 20:24Speaker 3: in the family's sick, nobody can help you pack your
- 20:27Speaker 3: house up, and obviously you've got to move by a
- 20:29Speaker 3: certain date. There's no extending it. So yeah, it was
- 20:34Speaker 3: just total nightmare. That was probably like the worst hospital
- 20:37Speaker 3: emission that we've had. And also Harriet was really really
- 20:41Speaker 3: unwell at that point, to the point where she actually
- 20:44Speaker 3: ended up going on TPN because she lost so much
- 20:48Speaker 3: weight from being poorly that they had to get her
- 20:52Speaker 3: onto the total parental nutrition through a pit line. So
- 20:58Speaker 3: that was another surgery that she had to have, going
- 21:02Speaker 3: under the general aesthetic to have the pick line cafeter inserted.
- 21:08Speaker 3: And again that was another kind of thing that we
- 21:10Speaker 3: didn't really know about, So we didn't know anything about
- 21:12Speaker 3: pick lines or about TPN and how that worked. So
- 21:18Speaker 3: it's like all these interventions that she's kind of had
- 21:20Speaker 3: throughout her journey. I mean it's great in some ways.
- 21:24Speaker 3: I feel like we've learned a lot of lessons, but
- 21:27Speaker 3: it's also a lot for you know, a child she
- 21:30Speaker 3: wasn't even too at this point, you know, to go
- 21:32Speaker 3: through and that that can be quite hard, sort of
- 21:35Speaker 3: remembering all that and thinking about, you know, the pain
- 21:38Speaker 3: that she must have been in but not being able
- 21:41Speaker 3: to communicate it and for us as parents being able
- 21:44Speaker 3: to do very little about it. Yeah, that's like really
- 21:48Speaker 3: really hard.
- 21:49Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I can imagine, Sorry that I can imagine.
- 21:53Speaker 2: That's excuse big, I can imagine. That's incredibly tough because
- 21:58Speaker 2: you're almost you got both hands tied together. You can't
- 22:02Speaker 2: you can't can't do it. You can't do a great deal.
- 22:05Speaker 2: Obviously you try and do like everything you can, but
- 22:09Speaker 2: it must be Yeah, it must be incredibly hard. But
- 22:13Speaker 2: on the subject that you just said about the whole
- 22:16Speaker 2: moving house and having Harriet in hospital and sort of
- 22:23Speaker 2: I hear this from a lot of parents who say, well,
- 22:25Speaker 2: I have no idea how we got through it, Like
- 22:27Speaker 2: I just you know, when you think of obstacles in
- 22:32Speaker 2: life and do you think, well, how on earth did
- 22:34Speaker 2: we get through it? Sometimes it's one of those things
- 22:38Speaker 2: where actually you're a lot stronger than maybe you thought
- 22:40Speaker 2: you were at the beginning, And it's it's one of
- 22:45Speaker 2: those where maybe maybe like today, when you look back
- 22:49Speaker 2: at it and think, actually, how did we do that?
- 22:52Speaker 2: But maybe at the time it was just well we'll
- 22:55Speaker 2: just do X, Y Z Exactly.
- 22:58Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it was. I think think I think
- 23:00Speaker 3: as a parent anyway, you get this kind of new
- 23:03Speaker 3: foundability to just push through things. And then obviously when
- 23:07Speaker 3: you kind of add medical complexities on top of that,
- 23:10Speaker 3: you know, you do kind of build this resilience and
- 23:13Speaker 3: this ability to weather life storms. And you know, in
- 23:20Speaker 3: some ways, I'm almost grateful to have had this experience
- 23:24Speaker 3: because you know, it has made me a much stronger person,
- 23:29Speaker 3: and you know, I'm seeing it now in kind of
- 23:33Speaker 3: the things that I'm doing in my life. It's given
- 23:35Speaker 3: me a lot of strength. So for example, I do
- 23:38Speaker 3: I work for a university and I do a bit
- 23:40Speaker 3: of work with their healthcare team, and I do presentations
- 23:44Speaker 3: about Harriet and talk about Hirshbring's disease. And you know,
- 23:48Speaker 3: a few years ago, I would never have been able
- 23:50Speaker 3: to stand up in front of you know, thirty or
- 23:52Speaker 3: fifty people and deliver a presentation. And now I can
- 23:56Speaker 3: do that. So it's all these little ways in which
- 23:58Speaker 3: that journey has kind of, you know, strengthened, you know,
- 24:02Speaker 3: myself and the husband, and I mean, Harriet is the
- 24:06Speaker 3: strongest of us all because I have to say, nothing
- 24:09Speaker 3: bothers that girl at all. She just gets on with life.
- 24:13Speaker 3: She has the best life ever and has so much fun.
- 24:17Speaker 3: And I really think that, you know, if you didn't
- 24:20Speaker 3: know that she had hirshprings, if you didn't know that
- 24:21Speaker 3: she had the ideostomy, you wouldn't know a thing because
- 24:25Speaker 3: she's just so full of energy, full of life. And
- 24:28Speaker 3: we are so fortunate that that is our experience of
- 24:32Speaker 3: the day to day because I know that for so
- 24:34Speaker 3: many families that live with hirshprings, and that is not
- 24:38Speaker 3: always the case. So while we've had a rough ride
- 24:41Speaker 3: of things in terms of hospital emissions and sickness, bugs
- 24:45Speaker 3: and that sort of thing, you know, we are very
- 24:47Speaker 3: fortunate that our day to day life is at the
- 24:50Speaker 3: moment much more settled.
- 24:52Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, that's really really good to hear. And like
- 24:55Speaker 2: you said, you end up being a lot stronger than
- 24:57Speaker 2: you you think you are, and it's great to hear
- 25:00Speaker 2: as well that you're that you've done presentations, talked to
- 25:05Speaker 2: various healthcare teams, which I think is absolutely fantastic because above,
- 25:10Speaker 2: above everything else, it get us more awareness out there.
- 25:14Speaker 2: I mean, you know, again, like you talk to a
- 25:16Speaker 2: lot of healthcare professionals and they can't know everything about everything,
- 25:20Speaker 2: of course, but there's a lot that still have no
- 25:23Speaker 2: idea what I mean, if if you said the term
- 25:25Speaker 2: Hirschbrungk's disease, it probably wouldn't even know what part of
- 25:27Speaker 2: the body it would be exactly.
- 25:30Speaker 3: So yeah, we see that all the time. And for example,
- 25:34Speaker 3: one of our local hospitals is James Cook Hospital in Middlesbrough,
- 25:37Speaker 3: which is quite a big hospital and you know it
- 25:41Speaker 3: was quite a specialist hospital, but the pediatric stuff there
- 25:45Speaker 3: the couple of times where Harriet has had to go,
- 25:47Speaker 3: usually for things that aren't Hirschwilms related, they have no
- 25:51Speaker 3: idea what Hirshbranks is. They don't even know anything about stomacare.
- 25:55Speaker 3: It's you know, it's very much kind of certainly, Mike Serits,
- 26:00Speaker 3: I feel like it is really the children's hospitals, especially
- 26:03Speaker 3: children's hospitals, that are the only places that are equipped
- 26:07Speaker 3: to kind of deal with hirshprings and everything that comes
- 26:10Speaker 3: under that umbrella, you know. And for some people we're
- 26:15Speaker 3: quite lucky leads. For us, we're still under leads, even
- 26:18Speaker 3: though we live in Middlesbrough. But for us it's about
- 26:22Speaker 3: I don't know, an hour and a quarter in the car.
- 26:24Speaker 3: Some people, you know, their nearest children's hospital is one
- 26:27Speaker 3: hundred miles away or you know, one hundred and fifty
- 26:29Speaker 3: miles away, and to be able to get the care
- 26:31Speaker 3: that they need, you know, it's so much more complicated
- 26:35Speaker 3: once you add distance as a factor. So it blows
- 26:39Speaker 3: my mind a little bit that, you know, this is
- 26:41Speaker 3: obviously you know, hirshprings is quite rare, but it's not
- 26:44Speaker 3: as rare as other kind of medical conditions that seem
- 26:48Speaker 3: to be. You know, people have a lot of knowledge
- 26:50Speaker 3: of and understanding of, so I think being able to
- 26:54Speaker 3: raise awareness about it and talk about it, I think
- 26:57Speaker 3: is really important.
- 26:59Speaker 2: Yeah, most definitely. I mean it's just my own experience
- 27:02Speaker 2: in terms of distance. I mean I live in Suffolk
- 27:06Speaker 2: and by children's hospital that I went to it was
- 27:09Speaker 2: great Ormond Street in London, which is which is fairly
- 27:12Speaker 2: far away even on the train and going there once.
- 27:16Speaker 2: They're every three months six months throughout my spodhood. It's ladies,
- 27:22Speaker 2: you know, a fair old distance and there are people
- 27:23Speaker 2: who travel a lot further, a lot further because you
- 27:28Speaker 2: need that that specialist care and you need those well,
- 27:34Speaker 2: you need those specialists, you know, the people that know
- 27:36Speaker 2: you and the people who know how to treat you.
- 27:38Speaker 2: And I think that's that's really important. And and just
- 27:41Speaker 2: on the subject of awareness as well, I know you're
- 27:46Speaker 2: also a big part of a new charity or going
- 27:50Speaker 2: to be charity soon I think, not quite a charity yet,
- 27:54Speaker 2: going to be a charity suit of Hashburgs Disease UK.
- 28:00Speaker 2: In terms of your kind of involvement and role within there,
- 28:04Speaker 2: what what do you do?
- 28:07Speaker 3: So I'm one of the trustees and we work with
- 28:11Speaker 3: our founder and Regina and at the minute we're still
- 28:16Speaker 3: trying to kind of figure out what we can do
- 28:19Speaker 3: and I guess what we would like to do. So
- 28:24Speaker 3: for me, the kind of long term goal I think
- 28:26Speaker 3: has always been about creating a network of Hirshpring's families.
- 28:32Speaker 3: Where I live in the northeast that doesn't seem to
- 28:35Speaker 3: be a great deal going on. So I know in
- 28:38Speaker 3: some areas there's a bit more of a community, but
- 28:41Speaker 3: in others there really isn't. I do think a lot
- 28:44Speaker 3: of it is very dependent on where you live. For example,
- 28:46Speaker 3: if you live sort of like Liverpool Way and you're
- 28:48Speaker 3: linked in with older Hay Hospital, there's probably a bit
- 28:51Speaker 3: more going on for you than if you're based, you know,
- 28:54Speaker 3: up in Newcastle or Middlesbrough like I am. So the
- 28:57Speaker 3: long term for me would be to be able to
- 29:00Speaker 3: kind of facilitate building those networks, working with the hospitals,
- 29:03Speaker 3: the universities, tying everything in and being able to create
- 29:07Speaker 3: these kind of branches across the UK to support families.
- 29:12Speaker 3: I think it's a very lonely experience going through the
- 29:18Speaker 3: hirshbrng's journey, and I think, you know, at the time
- 29:22Speaker 3: when we were kind of going through it initially knowing
- 29:26Speaker 3: that there was a place that I could go to,
- 29:28Speaker 3: even if it was just a forum or you know,
- 29:31Speaker 3: an online website where other people had had this experience
- 29:37Speaker 3: and you could kind of see people through different stages
- 29:39Speaker 3: of it. So people that have babies with hirshbrongs, people
- 29:42Speaker 3: that have teenagers and then adults with Hirshbrung's, you know,
- 29:46Speaker 3: kind of seeing how that journey can look for different people.
- 29:50Speaker 3: I think that probably would have helped us a lot
- 29:53Speaker 3: in terms of coming to terms with that diagnosis and
- 29:58Speaker 3: understanding what that means. So that is kind of for
- 30:02Speaker 3: me a big thing. And I think as well, having
- 30:04Speaker 3: a place for parents to talk about the challenges of
- 30:10Speaker 3: parenting a child with Hirshbrungs. You know, I think we're
- 30:15Speaker 3: sometimes you know, generally as parents to say that, you know,
- 30:20Speaker 3: afraid to say that we're struggling and that things are
- 30:22Speaker 3: really hard. And when you know, for example, I'm in
- 30:26Speaker 3: like a WhatsApp group with a bunch of mums and
- 30:30Speaker 3: you know, all their kids, thankfully are very healthy and happy,
- 30:35Speaker 3: and then you know, when I'm having a sort of
- 30:37Speaker 3: like difficulty with Harriet Hirshbrung's or something that's happening, it's
- 30:40Speaker 3: quite hard for me to kind of talk about it
- 30:43Speaker 3: because I know they can't understand, and I don't expect
- 30:47Speaker 3: them to understand, but there isn't really anywhere else I
- 30:50Speaker 3: can kind of get that out there, So, you know,
- 30:54Speaker 3: I think being able to connect with other people to
- 30:59Speaker 3: know that not alone. I think that is a really
- 31:02Speaker 3: really important thing and I would really like to be
- 31:04Speaker 3: a big part of kind of building that up, you know,
- 31:08Speaker 3: in future, and also for you know, children today that
- 31:12Speaker 3: have Hirshbruings, for them to be able to build networks
- 31:14Speaker 3: and to meet people. Obviously, we're very lucky in this
- 31:18Speaker 3: day and age that we have the Internet, social media,
- 31:21Speaker 3: it's easier than ever to connect with people all over
- 31:23Speaker 3: the world. But I think having Hirshbrings is the UK
- 31:29Speaker 3: is kind of like a central hub for that, you know,
- 31:31Speaker 3: people can find exactly what it is that looking for
- 31:34Speaker 3: just in one place. Yeah.
- 31:37Speaker 2: Absolutely, and especially with being UK centric as well, because
- 31:41Speaker 2: there are certain things of the UK system that are
- 31:45Speaker 2: excuse me, having interview people in South Africa, Canada, Jia, America, etcetera.
- 31:54Speaker 2: The healthcare system is completely different wherever you go. Think
- 32:00Speaker 2: something that is is UK centric that you can talk
- 32:06Speaker 2: to people within, I think will be absolutely fantastic. Really
- 32:11Speaker 2: really really looking forward to seeing seeing how that progresses.
- 32:16Speaker 2: And as we sit here just now, we'll just received
- 32:20Speaker 2: my head little Hirsprung's card, my little key ring as well,
- 32:24Speaker 2: so those came very properly in the post so yeah, no,
- 32:28Speaker 2: it sounds. It sounds fantastic. And also of the subject
- 32:35Speaker 2: of being able to talk to other people who have HUSH,
- 32:39Speaker 2: whether whether they have Hirshprungs or whether they are parents
- 32:42Speaker 2: of a child with Sprungs, I think that leads us
- 32:45Speaker 2: on to sort of parental mental health, which I think
- 32:50Speaker 2: is still an under under explored topic. And I think,
- 32:59Speaker 2: having discussed this with a few people, not many, but
- 33:02Speaker 2: a few people, I think it's something that is I
- 33:08Speaker 2: know that you want to talk about, and I think
- 33:10Speaker 2: it's something that is incredibly important when it comes to
- 33:15Speaker 2: not not just hershbon, having a child with a chronic condition.
- 33:20Speaker 2: You know, like you said, you're you're you have a
- 33:23Speaker 2: child diagnosed with a condition that nobody's ever heard of,
- 33:25Speaker 2: let's be honest, and it's and suddenly you go, well, what, what,
- 33:32Speaker 2: what on earth could my child do? Are they going
- 33:34Speaker 2: to be able to walk and talk and go to
- 33:36Speaker 2: school and you know, play sports or anything like that.
- 33:41Speaker 2: I guess would you like to talk a little bit
- 33:43Speaker 2: about your experience in that field.
- 33:47Speaker 3: Absolutely. I mean I've always kind of said with our experience,
- 33:51Speaker 3: I'm an open book insofar as how I feel and
- 33:55Speaker 3: what my experience of things is. But obviously I can't
- 33:58Speaker 3: speak for Harriet, and I kind of don't want to
- 34:01Speaker 3: kind of put things out there that, you know, she
- 34:05Speaker 3: can't really defend herself against, especially she's a child. I
- 34:09Speaker 3: think one of the things that's very difficult to talk
- 34:11Speaker 3: about when it comes to the mental health of a
- 34:15Speaker 3: parent of a child that has a chronic condition is
- 34:18Speaker 3: that you almost feel like you can't really talk about
- 34:20Speaker 3: it because it's your child that has the problem. You know,
- 34:24Speaker 3: it's your child that is having the surgeries. It's your
- 34:27Speaker 3: child that is having the hundreds of canular attempts and
- 34:31Speaker 3: all those sorts of things. So you kind of feel
- 34:35Speaker 3: a bit like, well, you know, I can't make it
- 34:38Speaker 3: about me, and I can't fall apart now because you
- 34:42Speaker 3: know it's not me that has the condition. But I
- 34:45Speaker 3: think it takes such a toll because it's not just
- 34:50Speaker 3: you know, the diagnosis, it's everything that comes with it.
- 34:53Speaker 3: It's the mental load of it. It's knowing the prescriptions,
- 34:57Speaker 3: ordering the prescriptions, keeping track of hospital appointments, knowing you
- 35:01Speaker 3: know when your child is in well and what you
- 35:03Speaker 3: need to do, always having a backpack to go to hospital.
- 35:07Speaker 3: It's all these things that you just kind of you
- 35:10Speaker 3: just do them because you have to, you have no choice,
- 35:15Speaker 3: But it's still there. You're always thinking about what's the
- 35:18Speaker 3: next thing going to be, and that is huge for
- 35:22Speaker 3: anybody to take on. And it's not always going to
- 35:26Speaker 3: be easy, you know. And I think when you're in
- 35:29Speaker 3: situations where your child in hospital, you're not sleeping, you're
- 35:33Speaker 3: not eating very well, you know, you're not really being
- 35:36Speaker 3: able to look after yourself. I think you absolutely are
- 35:38Speaker 3: susceptible to experiencing poor mental health, and I think that
- 35:43Speaker 3: it's not always picked up on or recognized or in
- 35:47Speaker 3: those situations, you know, it can't really be focused on
- 35:50Speaker 3: because obviously the priority is looking after the child that
- 35:53Speaker 3: is in well. But I've definitely a couple of times
- 35:56Speaker 3: when we've been admitted experienced some really difficult mental health issues.
- 36:02Speaker 3: I was very lucky in that LGI have something called
- 36:06Speaker 3: a gastro psychologist that we work with who is so
- 36:10Speaker 3: lovely and she kind of supports us as a family
- 36:15Speaker 3: and talks about what we're experiencing, how we feel about it,
- 36:21Speaker 3: and what we can do to kind of, you know,
- 36:23Speaker 3: make the situation better. But I'm very acutely aware that
- 36:27Speaker 3: that's not everyone's experience, and I think a lot of
- 36:30Speaker 3: parents probably suffer in silence and probably don't really know
- 36:36Speaker 3: how to get out of things. So I think, you know,
- 36:39Speaker 3: with Herschbrings's us UK, I think it would be great
- 36:41Speaker 3: if we can kind of filter in a bit of
- 36:44Speaker 3: support for parental mental health and look at how we
- 36:48Speaker 3: can improve our mental health even when we are faced
- 36:51Speaker 3: with incredibly difficult situations. But ultimately, you can't look after
- 36:58Speaker 3: anybody until you can look after your health. And I
- 37:01Speaker 3: think certainly in the last year we've been very lucky
- 37:05Speaker 3: that things have kind of been a bit easier for us.
- 37:07Speaker 3: Harriet's not been in hospital as much. We have, you know,
- 37:11Speaker 3: a relatively okay day to day life. That's going to
- 37:15Speaker 3: be a bit of breathing room to kind of think about, Okay, well,
- 37:17Speaker 3: how can I improve my mental health? How can I
- 37:20Speaker 3: deal with situations better? But obviously that isn't always the case.
- 37:24Speaker 3: People don't get that kind of that break. So I
- 37:27Speaker 3: think having a bit more certainly in the hospitals as well,
- 37:30Speaker 3: just a bit more kind of integrated support of the
- 37:32Speaker 3: parents I think would really be invaluable because it is
- 37:37Speaker 3: really hard and like I said, you know, not every
- 37:39Speaker 3: day is going to be an easy day, and it's
- 37:43Speaker 3: not as possible to think, well, you know, I'm lucky,
- 37:46Speaker 3: because things could be worse. You know, you get very
- 37:50Speaker 3: bogged down in the situation that you're in. So yeah,
- 37:54Speaker 3: and that can be you know, extraordinarily tough, and it
- 37:58Speaker 3: feels like nobody really gets it, you know.
- 38:01Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely. I mean it's good to know that there
- 38:05Speaker 2: is a gastro psychologist. I've never heard of that term.
- 38:07Speaker 3: I'd never heard of it either, but yeah, that's what
- 38:11Speaker 3: she is.
- 38:12Speaker 2: Yeah, that's really really good to hear because the lynks
- 38:16Speaker 2: as well. Having read a lot of papers as I have,
- 38:22Speaker 2: the links between gastro health and mental health are huge,
- 38:28Speaker 2: or gastro health and brain health are massive. So I
- 38:32Speaker 2: guess we are possibly more susceptible having a stomach condition
- 38:36Speaker 2: to other issues as well. But that's really really good
- 38:39Speaker 2: to hear. And like you say, you know, everybody is
- 38:43Speaker 2: different when it comes to when it comes to having
- 38:49Speaker 2: a chronic condition or being a parent of a child
- 38:51Speaker 2: with the chronic condition, So I guess it's quite difficult
- 38:55Speaker 2: to have a sort of one size fits all approach.
- 38:58Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, I think it's always going to be
- 39:03Speaker 3: It's always going to be a challenge. I mean, like,
- 39:04Speaker 3: how many different types of hirshebrings do we have, you know,
- 39:06Speaker 3: ultra short segment, short segment, long segment total, chlonic, you know,
- 39:10Speaker 3: and within that, every child you know, experiences it differently,
- 39:16Speaker 3: so and then every parent experiences differently. You know. Some
- 39:19Speaker 3: families have absolutely brilliant support, other families don't. And I
- 39:26Speaker 3: think being able to kind of deal with that inequality
- 39:29Speaker 3: and make it a bit more kind of you know,
- 39:33Speaker 3: even across the board, would would go a long way
- 39:36Speaker 3: in supporting families, you know for sure.
- 39:39Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, definitely. I just thought that point of how
- 39:42Speaker 2: many do we have? I think I think it's six. However,
- 39:47Speaker 2: I've just seen I've been doing a lot of little
- 39:50Speaker 2: bit of research and talking to various parents with TCHD
- 39:53Speaker 2: total and then there's a little plus signal at the
- 39:57Speaker 2: other plus side, sorry, at the end of it, and
- 39:59Speaker 2: that plus can mean loads of different things. So now
- 40:03Speaker 2: by six hirshbruns that I put up a few a
- 40:07Speaker 2: few weeks ago, I now think there's loads more. So
- 40:10Speaker 2: I need to do some research before I before I
- 40:13Speaker 2: start posting that again. But yeah, you're right, there's there's
- 40:16Speaker 2: so many other conditions and potential sort of side effects
- 40:21Speaker 2: that come with with hirshbruns. And just as we wrap up,
- 40:27Speaker 2: I know you've talked about how well Harriet's getting on
- 40:30Speaker 2: at the moment. That's so so good to hear that
- 40:32Speaker 2: you haven't get touched with has any admissions for a while,
- 40:38Speaker 2: But what do you see for her in the future.
- 40:44Speaker 3: So where we're at with our journey at the moment
- 40:46Speaker 3: is that because she's kind of doing so well with
- 40:50Speaker 3: her ilostomy and hasn't had any kind of significant illnesses
- 40:55Speaker 3: for a while, is just to kind of keep things
- 40:58Speaker 3: as is. It may be the case that they, you know,
- 41:03Speaker 3: offer pull through surgery using her you know, the tiny
- 41:07Speaker 3: bit of you know, colon that she's got left and
- 41:10Speaker 3: the small intestine to do a pull through. Me personally
- 41:15Speaker 3: and my husband personally, urgue is that because she has
- 41:18Speaker 3: a reasonably good quality of life at the moment, we're
- 41:21Speaker 3: not really prepared to kind of put her through that
- 41:24Speaker 3: surgery just because I think there are just probably just
- 41:29Speaker 3: too many risks in terms of what the outcomes are
- 41:32Speaker 3: for her. And that's at the moment that is our choice.
- 41:37Speaker 3: And we've been very lucky that you know, are you know,
- 41:39Speaker 3: the surgeons and stoninurses have worked with us some kind
- 41:42Speaker 3: of not really pushed us one way or the other,
- 41:46Speaker 3: and we felt like we've been listened to in terms
- 41:48Speaker 3: of making that argument for keeping things as they are.
- 41:51Speaker 3: Whether when Harriet is a little bit older and has
- 41:53Speaker 3: a bit more understanding of things, she you know, wants
- 41:57Speaker 3: to have a bit more input on that decision, then
- 41:59Speaker 3: you know, it's her body that's that's her choice to make.
- 42:03Speaker 3: I think as parents were always going to kind of
- 42:06Speaker 3: hope that she doesn't kind of put herself through that,
- 42:08Speaker 3: but being able to understand it's not really going to
- 42:11Speaker 3: be our decision forever. And I mean that's another thing
- 42:16Speaker 3: that you know, we kind of carry the not the burden,
- 42:19Speaker 3: but the load of as parents of children with this condition,
- 42:23Speaker 3: is that you're making these decisions for them, and you know,
- 42:27Speaker 3: one day we are going to have to explain to
- 42:29Speaker 3: her why she has a stoma and you know, why
- 42:32Speaker 3: we didn't put her through a surgery, and you know,
- 42:35Speaker 3: all these kind of tricky conversations that one day we
- 42:38Speaker 3: will have to pick up. You know, that's a huge
- 42:41Speaker 3: kind of load to carry as a parent, and you know,
- 42:44Speaker 3: we just kind of with Harrier, even though she's only
- 42:47Speaker 3: just coming up to three, you know, try to explain
- 42:50Speaker 3: to her. You know, she's got her strungs, she has
- 42:52Speaker 3: a stonma, you know, but she's so happy and healthy
- 42:56Speaker 3: and that's what makes her happy and healthy. And you know,
- 43:00Speaker 3: she's very interested in her stone as well. She always
- 43:02Speaker 3: likes to see what we're doing. When we do bad changes,
- 43:04Speaker 3: she wants to get involved. So I think for us,
- 43:08Speaker 3: it's just about kind of building her own self confidence
- 43:12Speaker 3: as she grows up and goes through life. But yeah,
- 43:15Speaker 3: like I said, she's just absolutely full of energy and
- 43:18Speaker 3: I think she's I think she's probably gonna be quite sporty,
- 43:20Speaker 3: so fingers crossed. You know, she kind of finds a
- 43:23Speaker 3: way to balance that with you know, the iliostomy or
- 43:27Speaker 3: if she ever does go through surgery, to be able
- 43:30Speaker 3: to just keep on being herself. You know, this condition
- 43:33Speaker 3: doesn't define her. It's it's just a part of who
- 43:36Speaker 3: she is.
- 43:37Speaker 2: Absolutely no well said, Well said, But I thank you
- 43:41Speaker 2: so so much for coming on and all obviously all
- 43:44Speaker 2: the work that you do with with Hershbrod's UK wish
- 43:47Speaker 2: you all the all the success with that as well.
- 43:51Speaker 2: And wishing all the best for Harriet, for you and
- 43:55Speaker 2: the rest of the family. Thank you so much for
- 43:57Speaker 2: coming on so much.
- 43:58Speaker 1: Thank you, thank you for listening and being part of
- 44:03Speaker 1: this growing community. If you have enjoyed the episode, don't
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- 44:09Speaker 1: someone who might need it. You can connect with us
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- 44:16Speaker 1: name Tom's Hirshprung's Podcast. See you next week.