Kendra's story

On 9th June 1999 my wife gave birth to our fourth child who we named Kendra Louise Taylor. She weighed in at 5lb 6oz and as far as we knew everything was fine, little did we know what was to come.

On 24th June 1999 we took her to the doctors due to her not feeding well and going blue, this was the start of it all. When we arrived at the hospital her oxygen saturation's in her blood were only 44% instead of the expected level. We were transferred to Bristol Children’s Hospital where she was diagnosed as having Tetrology of Fallot heart condition with small pulmonary arteries. It was then that she was tested and diagnosed with DiGeorge syndrome. She had a Blalock Taussig shunt operation on 5th August 1999. She was also diagnosed on her first admission to Bristol as suffering from the following:


Bilateral talipes of both feet
Right vesicoureteric reflux
Anterior atopic anus
and hypocalaemia.

Although she was not diagnosed as having any immune deficiency in all her admissions the medical staff were not taking any risks so when she needed blood they were giving her irradiated blood.

On 22nd October 1999 she underwent Nissen fundoplication and gastrostomy to correct the gastro-oesophageal reflux she had been suffering with. During this admission whilst on PICU she was still having blue spells so further investigations were required. A bronchoscopy was performed which showed she was also suffering from tracheo-malacia.

The tracheo-malacia turned out to be the most serious problem she had to deal with. She had to be transferred to Great Ormond Street Hospital where she underwent a procedure known as “Stenting”, which was done on 22nd November 1999. This is where small metal stents were inserted into her trachea and main bronchi, due to the bottom third of her trachea being collapsed.

She recovered well from this and the repeat bronchoscopy showed a satisfactory condition. So eventually it looked as though we might get our little girl home for Christmas, which is what everybody was aiming for.

We had a lovely Christmas but unfortunately it was short lived as on the 29th December 1999 Kendra gave up her brave fight and passed away. The ironic thing is that after everything she had been through, it was just a simple infection that was enough to bring her short life to an end.

During her short life we only managed to get our little girl home with us for a short time as most of her life was spent in hospitals but the care she received was, without doubt, the best possible and for this we must thank all the medical staff involved with her care.