Meet Zara
Sadly, five year old Zara has spent much of her young life in and out of hospital, facing challenges that no child her age should ever have to endure.
Zara cannot eat like other children and relies on a feeding tube for 20 hours a day. This delivers essential nutrients directly to her stomach, ensuring she receives the nutrition she needs to grow and thrive. For the past four years, she has needed general anaesthetics every three months to maintain this lifesaving support. Soon her doctors hope that switching to a new type of tube will reduce these procedures to twice a year. However, even with this change, Zara will continue to need regular port flushes and other difficult, often unpleasant treatments.
But that’s not all. Zara’s youngest brother Zeke also needs hospital care and now both children require round the clock care.
Zeke’s illness is still a bit of a mystery. He has low muscle tone and was recently diagnosed with an ‘unsafe swallow’, which puts him at much greater risk of choking, chest infections, and pneumonia. Like his big sister, he is now also tube fed - every three hours - and wears a compression suit to help his tiny body. His doctors are working hard to understand why his body sometimes simply "shuts down."
For parents Nicole and Jay, the strain of caring for two children with complex, but different medical needs, is enormous.
There are countless appointments, difficult procedures, and the heart breaking loss of a ‘normal’ childhood. Yet, despite all of this, they remain hopeful and focused on giving their kids the best possible support and loving care - and you can see that reflected in Zara, Zeke and big brother Zaiden’s mile-wide smiles! But it’s hard. And things are still so uncertain.
Every child deserves a happy, carefree childhood, but sadly, that isn’t always possible, and each year thousands of children around our region need hospital care. Your generosity ensures our youngest patients continue to receive the best possible care.
Your gifts help fund lifesaving incubators for babies, training for expert healthcare professionals on advanced simulation technologies, child friendly devices that help distract kids from painful procedures, therapeutic toys for developmental assessments; and many other things that wrap around a child and their families as they receive hospital treatment and care.
Your one off or regular donations help thousands of children across the Wellington region, and beyond, and support the exceptional work of the dedicated medical and surgical paediatric teams that work across Te Wao Nui, Wellington, Kenepuru and Hutt Hospitals.
Nicole can’t speak highly enough of the support her family has received:
We are so thankful for everyone involved in our children’s care over the last 5 years. Having already walked a similar path with Zara, it has been mentally challenging to begin another medical journey with Zeke. The silver lining is already knowing the incredible teams in both Wellington and Hutt Hospitals and knowing we will be well supported when Zeke heads in for his first operation.
