YOU MAY GET MORE THAN YOU BARGAINED FOR.
View from the maternity ward at St Thomas’ Hospital.
Vivien Walsh, former vice-chair of the SHA, writes:-
My son, Daniel, was born in Birmingham in June 1976. While I was pregnant, we discovered we
had to move to London. I decided to move after the birth as I had got a place in a highly regarded
maternity unit and had no idea how to go about transferring to a London Hospital, and especially
how much choice I would have. So we moved to Brixton when he was about 10 days old. All our
belongings had gone in advance.
When Daniel was about 2 or 3 weeks old he began to be very uncomfortable during or after
feeding, and soon started vomiting after every feed. I took him to the local GP, with whom we had
registered as soon as we moved. The GP sent us home and said he would “settle down”. A week
later he was still vomiting – “projectile vomiting” they called it later. He was only a few pounds in
weight but could vomit across the room. It would have been impressive if it hadn’t been
frightening.
Two GPs said he would “settle down”
I went back to the GP practice and made sure I saw another doctor. Same result. I was not
satisfied with the outcome – indeed I was terrified about what was happening. So I put him in the
car and drove to St Thomas’s Hospital. It was the only hospital I knew where to find – right beside
County Hall and opposite the Houses of Parliament.
We went into A&E. The professor of pediatrics appeared. I don’t know if he was called specially,
but quite possibly. He gave me an apron to put on. I thought my feet were going to go through the
floor. The apron was made of lead, to protect me from the X-rays – or to make the X-ray photo of
Daniel’s internal organs distinguishable from mine. I held him upright while the X-ray photo was
taken.
Pyloric Stenosis
The Professor said to the nurses “I’m taking him downstairs” which meant to the operating
theatre. He explained later that the problem was “pyloric stenosis”, or over development of the
sphincter muscle that normally let the digested or partially digested food into the intestines. The
over-development of the muscle prevented the food from passing round the digestive tract, and
instead was vomited in the other direction – back out again. With enormous force.
Happily the operation cured the problem. I later discovered a close colleague had had the same
operation as a baby, and was somewhat disconcerted when I asked to see his scar. It was quite a
lot larger than Daniel’s. Huge improvements to the operation had evidently been made during the
20-30 intervening years so that Daniel’s operation was carried out by something like keyhole
surgery. I also spoke to another friend whose older brother had died from the same condition,
before the development of the operation.
While the operation was done someone else took me several flights upstairs to a mother-and baby
ward and left me with the nurses there, and let me phone his Dad at work. We stayed in St
Thomas’s for a few days until we were told it was fine to go home, but to come back to
outpatients’ to make sure all was well after an interval of time.
We were told quite firmly that Pyloric Stenosis was not hereditary. But my grandson developed the same condition over 20 years later, when the family were in Spain, but not yet very fluent in Spanish. Daniel repeated the words “Pyloric Stenosis” over and over again until the doctors took in what he was saying and carried out a very similar procedure on my grandson.
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