For David and Kelly Cave, even giving up a piece of themselves was not too much to do for their desperately sick baby girl. Eight-week-old Madison was suffering from acute liver failure, an illness that turned her skin yellow and the whites of her eyes bright green.
Now, thanks to two liver transplants – one using tissue from her dad’s liver – Madison is finally getting better. But the Auckland couple, who are also parents to Emily (4), say it’s been a year of living hell.
Bouncing Madison on her knee, Kelly (28) remembers how her baby screamed almost nonstop for five weeks. “She wouldn’t sleep or eat. Even the neighbours ended up coming over to help because they heard the constant screaming.”
Doctors diagnosed constipation and colic – but Kelly wasn’t convinced, and so, after a phone call with her mother who could hear Madison screaming in the background, rushed her to Starship Hospital, where she was diagnosed with biliary atresia, a blockage of the bile duct which stops bile getting to the liver, causing cirrhosis.
When doctors said she wouldn’t survive without a transplant, Kelly was terrified. “I couldn’t believe my ears. She was my little angel.“
To be robust enough for surgery, Madison’s weight needed to be 10kg – not easy when she couldn’t digest food. “My heart just sank,” says Kelly. “How was I supposed to get her to put on weight if she couldn’t digest anything?“
Madison required a stomach operation and feeding by a tube before she could gain the 3kg she needed. Meanwhile, David (29) and Kelly were both tissue-tested to see if either of them was a potential donor. To their relief, David was, but it meant some serious detoxing was needed for David – a former British soldier whose “big army drinking” had taken its toll on his liver.
“I bet Kelly $1000 I could stay on the wagon for Madison,” he says. “I just had to make sure Madison got this operation, whatever it took. My little girl was going to have her best chance to live.”
Six months after the initial diagnosis, Madison at last got her liver transplant, but her body rejected the new organ. “I couldn’t believe what my baby had been through,” says David. “She looked so small and helpless, attached to all of the tubes and the machines.”
“I wanted to scream and cry,” says Kelly. “I was sure then that I wouldn’t be bringing my baby out of the hospital alive. It was just total despair.”
Madison needed another liver or she would die. She was placed at the top of the donor organ list, so she’d receive the first liver available. After 12 hours, they were told there was a liver in Australia that was a match, and it was being flown over in a private jet. Madison went in for yet another marathon operation. David and Kelly waited anxiously outside, knowing this was the last chance because her tiny body could not endure another transplant.
“It was like being on an emotional yo-yo,” says Kelly. Everything seemed to go well after the transplant, but five weeks later Madison’s body again rejected the organ. In desperation, doctors replaced all of Madison’s blood plasma with new stores that would have higher levels of immune cells. It was a last-ditch effort to save her life, and to David and Kelly’s immense relief, it worked.
“She just bounced back,” smiles Kelly. “The relief was unbelievable. We cried tears of joy for hours as the emotion of the ordeal caught up with us.”
Now, back in their Devonport home, the Cave family is enjoying life outside hospital and looking towards the future – and a well-deserved holiday. “We’re a normal family again,” grins Kelly. “If you look at us, you’d never guess what we’ve been through.
“David and I were planning on getting married before all of this happened, but we’re putting it off until after we take the kids to Disneyworld.”
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