Help Our Kids: Life-changing op saves 'happy boy'

Roberta Leevard says the day after his heart procedure two years ago her son Leighton, now 4, was up early running around the hospital corridors.

We need you to help us to Help Our Kids. The Herald is running a major campaign to try and raise at least $150,000 for our national children’s hospital, Starship. Each year, more than 9000 Kiwi kids from right throughout the country are treated in Starship’s theatres. Now it’s our turn to help the hospital and staff that Help Our Kids.

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There's a good chance Leighton Leevard wouldn't be the healthy and happy boy he is today if not for the staff at Starship.

The now 4-year-old had a difficult start in life - he was in and out of other hospitals with eczema, asthma and other general illnesses throughout his first year.

But an episode in which he turned blue resulted in a trip to Starship that proved life-changing.

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"I took him through to Starship, which is where accidentally they found a murmur in my son's back," his mother Roberta Leevard told the Herald.

Further tests were done and at 14 months he was diagnosed with a blood vessel abnormality in which blood can flow straight from an artery to a vein without passing through the tiny capillaries in between. The condition, called arterio-venous malformation or AVM, can occur anywhere in the body.

"He has asthma as well and [it] plays on his heart condition so they were really bad for each other."

A heart specialist placed a coil in Leighton's heart to block the faulty flow of blood. The procedure was done with a thin, flexible catheter via a blood vessel in the groin, rather than open-heart surgery through the chest.

"It's been two years since my son's heart operation ... If it was left [undiagnosed] eventually the more he became active with age his heart wouldn't have been able to handle it," said Ms Leevard, 24.

"Looking at Leighton you'd never know anything had been wrong with him. In fact at 6am the morning after his surgery he was running up and down the hospital corridors."

Ms Leevard says Leighton's health has improved since his heart procedure.

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"They said he's fine, fixed - but he has a coil in his heart. As long as he's got that there he should be okay."

"If it wasn't for the wonderful heart team and staff in general at Starship hospital, my son potentially wouldn't have been here."

Ms Leevard says her son was born small, "but he never let it affect him, he's such a happy boy ... he's gorgeous".

She encouraged people to donate to the Herald campaign to raise money for the upgrading of Starship's operating theatres and the addition of a new theatre.

"It's one of those situations you never know when you may need the specialty skills so I advise everyone, and anyone with kids in particular, to donate to Starship."

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