Carenza's story

Carenza Hope Uttley was born on 3rd March 2008 weighing a healthy 7lb 4oz. After a couple of days, Carenza went home and after catching a cold from her big sister Kimiko was struggling to breathe. Carenza’s community midwife attended the house and Carenza was sent to the Children’s Ward at Rotherham Hospital, where she was put on 100% oxygen as her

After being on oxygen for 7 days, Carenza was making huge progress and the doctors at the hospital diagnosed her with bronchilitis and were treating her for that.

Carenza had been tube fed but this made her sick so then the doctors took the decision to effectively starve her but put her nutrients back in with a drip via her hands. Mum was then able to try bottle feeding her again but her body went into shock and she collapsed and died in mums arms. Luckily the doctors managed to restart her heart and she was rushed into SCBU to be put on a ventilator and was put into a sedative state to make her body rest.

After 5 days in there, mum went to change Carenza’s nappy and her heart rate went from 70 beats a minute to 300 beats a minute. After 20 minutes the doctors decided to put Carenza in an ice bath to cool her body down, over the course of 12 hours she had another 7 of these episodes of her heart racing. The doctor at Leeds General Infirmary came down on Sunday morning to see her specially and he said that he thought she had a heart murmur.
He told the doctors what medicine to give her so that she would get well enough for her to go to his clinic in Leeds. Carenza went to Leeds around 3 weeks after discharge from hospital, where her doctor, Doctor Parsons, found she had an atrial septal defect and also had supraventricular tachycardia, he sorted some medicine out for us for her to take to slow her heart beat down.

This didn’t stop mum from being extremely worried about her and she slept pretty much on the floor of Carenza’s bedroom in those very early days of her life.

The family went to Leeds after a month and Doctor Parsons diagnosed another hole in the heart which was very unexpected, but her heart had managed to repair itself over the course of a year so at the minute she does not require surgery, just monitoring once a year.

She is now nearly 3 years old and is still little underweight for her age but she is a wonderful, happy little girl who attends nursery 3 mornings a week and just enjoys life with her family and big sister Kimiko.

Mr & Mrs Uttley have organised several fundraising events on behalf of the CHSF which and so far they have raised in the region of £10,000!!