Brennagh's Flight for Life

9.30pm Thursday 25th July 2013

The Flight Team arrived from Auckland bringing with them an expert team from PICU (Paediatric Intensive Care Unit ) at Starship Children's Hospital. It took another two hours to prepare Brennagh to transport. It was incredible to see what goes into switching over from hospital equipment to mobile equipment. All the lines of living-saving drugs and machines.

With the flight crew, ambulance crew, myself and Brennagh that made nine of us. I knew one of the ambulance crew so that was quite nice to have a familiar face. Although a lot of our medical team I would consider to be family.

Brennagh was settled in the aircraft at Palmerston North Airport and our life flight began. We flew over our house on the hill and all the boys at home were flicking the house lights on and off sending us lots of love with each flash. The flight was uneventful. I managed to even nod off a couple of times as I was shattered. As a person that doesn't fly unless it's an emergency, I was woken by turbulence and freaked out but judging by the reactions or lack of from the rest of the crew I gathered this was normal, so I settled again.

We arrived in Auckland and from there transported by ambulance, the fastest trip I've ever had! Lights, sirens and 140k plus! WOW! The moment was surreal, like a scene from a movie. I couldn't even grasp the gravity of our situation. It really was life and death.

It has taken another year to really process these events and understand how critical the situation was. I was clearly in a state of shock for the first 48 hours after this catastrophic event. Brennagh had life saving surgery where she had lost 3/4s of her bowel, leaving barely enough viable bowel to live/survive.

 As we move into 2015 I am so grateful to report that with the most experienced medical team I have ever encountered we have been able to get on with our lives for the sole purpose of enjoying every precious moment. Things could have been so different if the events of July 2013 didn't work in our favour. Instead I would have been mourning the loss of my only beautiful daughter and my sons would have been mourning the loss of their only sister. 

Brennagh would have been sadly missed by all her family and friends and it's her story that gives me the courage to share her rare conditions and her fight for life.

Kathleen McKay ~ Author