A young girl from East London is fighting for her life in hospital after a chest infection has left her on a ventilator. Polly Rae, a five-year-old from Rainham in East London, developed a chest infection a few weeks ago, but after a check up with the GP her parents were told it was nothing to worry about.
Polly’s mum Lucy Rae, 33, spoke to MyLondon, saying the chest infection just got worse. The GP prescribed some antibiotics, but after a week they were having no impact at all. In the end he recommended taking Polly to hospital, where she was admitted overnight but was then discharged the next day.
Lucy said: “We were at home for one night and then she just plummeted quickly over the course of a few days. She wasn’t getting any better even though she was having all this new medication.”
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Finally, she got transferred to the Royal London Hospital, where she was intubated. She was on a ventilator for three and a half weeks. Most concerningly for her family, no-one knows what caused Polly to get so sick.
But this isn’t the first time Polly has spent a while in hospital. When Lucy was around 15 weeks pregnant with Polly, they discovered Polly had a a hole in the middle of her heart.
“She kind of blew our world apart,” Lucy said. They also discovered that Polly had Down’s Syndrome. “It felt like we’d been hit by a bus,” Lucy said. “It was a real shock.
“Then we found out she had a heart condition and that kind of overruled the fact she had Down’s Syndrome. I wasn’t even thinking about the Down’s Syndrome any more, the fact she had a heart condition was really my biggest concern.”
It was a lot to process for Lucy and her husband. Lucy said she spent most of her pregnancy worrying, and had several panic attacks. “It was a really, really scary time because we didn’t know what it meant,” Lucy said.
The family spent most of the first year of her life in hospital, moving back and forward between their local hospital and Great Ormond Street. Polly was in hospital for around five months while she waited for open heart surgery to close the hole in her heart.
Lucy said: “We were living in the hospital. One of us would go home at weekends just to do washing, have a shower, sleep, and then go straight back to the hospital.”
Lucy says those months were just a blur. “It came with a lot of heavy emotions, but it was a time when you just have to dig and find strength you didn’t even know existed to get up every day and go to the hospital, to see your baby.”
It was as though the family’s lives began when they came home with Polly after she was finally discharged. “It took us a long time to start that chapter but it also came with a lot of trauma and more worrying. She’s been looked after by nurses for such a long time and then it was just down to me and her dad.”
Now, after Polly was put on a ventilator, being back in hospital has brought many memories and anxieties back. Lucy said: “I’ve had PTSD with it for the last four or five years because of all the times we’ve had previously.
“It definitely rears up my anxiety and now I’ve got a seven-month-old as well. So now you’re just juggling and trying to split yourself between the two of them which is impossible to do.”
Polly is “full of character, full of life”, Lucy said. “Everyone that comes into contact with Polly will get a smile or a hello.”
“She’s a funny kid, and very strong,” Lucy added.
“Even now, she’s under a lot of sedation and she’s still fighting that off and doing gymnastics with her legs, and I think nothing can stop her. She’s a force to be reckoned with and I have every faith that she is strong enough to fight this.”
Polly has successfully managed to come off the ventilator, but the family are currently waiting to see how she copes breathing by herself. You can follow and support Polly on Instagram here.
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