Hailey Wudwud is bright-eyed and overflowing with joy. You would never know by looking at her that for the past year, she’s been in and out of the intensive care unit at the Royal University Hospital in Saskatoon.
Last July, when Hailey was just a year old, her parents noticed something was wrong.
Hailey had swallowed a teddy bear’s plastic eye, but it went undetected. That’s when hospital trips became routine for the family, including a three-month stay in the ICU.
“Unfortunately, no one could find anything for us or give us an exact answer because we did start to treat asthmatic symptoms,” Payne said.
On Feb. 7, the family finally found what was causing Hailey so much pain.
“They found the object and after that, we started to get into small day surgeries,” he said. “Because the item was so deep, we had no way to find it.
“Because of the density of your bones and the density of this object, they match so well that you can’t see it behind her breastplate, or from the side.
“Her rib cage really interferes with the picture of it, so, unfortunately, no one really knew that it was there.”
Although the family now has an answer, the road to recovery still lies ahead. Payne said doctors found holes in Hailey’s throat, which caused it to collapse.
Because of this, she’s fed formula through a tube. Each feeding takes one hour and she’s fed five times a day. It’s a cycle the family is eager to get out of.
Through the long medical journey, which still isn’t over, Hailey’s family says they’ve been given a gift. They say she’s a spectacle of resilience.
“She is just about unaffected by it mentally and socially,” Payne said.
Hailey hasn’t been able to swim — her favourite hobby — due to her tubing, but she does almost everything else she used to do, like “fight with her sisters or wrestle with the dog, go play with her toys, and yell at the TV.”
Now, with a date set for reconstructive throat surgery in August, the family has advice for other parents worried something may be wrong.
Payne says the family is, of course, hoping for a full recovery after her surgery, but also has one modest wish for Hailey’s near future.
“I would really love for her to have Christmas dinner.”
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