Baby Grace, who was found abandoned among rubble on a building site last year has laughed for the first time and is starting to crawl, after having grommets to help resolve her hearing difficulties.
“Grace was named by the Netcare Pretoria East Hospital team who treated her when she was found on a cold and rainy day by a construction worker, crying from under a pile of rubble,” said Elmari Murphy, who takes care of Grace at the House of Kindness, a temporary safe house.
Dr Heinrich du Toit, a paediatrician practising at the hospital, recalled Grace was “a tiny little baby”, when she was found and brought to the hospital.
Estimating her age was not straightforward, as it appeared Grace may have been born prematurely at around 36 weeks or perhaps a month earlier.
Baby Grace remained in the hospital for over a week for tests, during which time the doctors and nurses grew extremely fond of her. On the day she was discharged into Murphy’s care through Child Welfare Groenkloof, everyone who had been involved in her care came to bid her farewell.
Tests revealed Baby Grace had a condition affecting her overall health that required specialised treatment as her best prospect. Murphy and her husband leapt into action and organised a fundraising raffle with one of their sheep as a prize.
With the support of the community, healthcare practitioners and the hospital pharmacy, Grace was able to have the specialised medication she needed to overcome the illness.
Amanda Bester, a diagnostic audiologist who was part of the multidisciplinary team caring for Grace, said repeated attempts to test the baby’s hearing were unsuccessful as she had recurring middle-ear infections.
“A diagnostic hearing test confirmed that Grace’s nerves to the brain to experience sound were working perfectly, and this indicated that her moderate hearing loss was only due to her chronic ear infections,” Bester said.
Murphy recalled that even with prescribed antibiotics, Grace cried at night and struggled to settle, which she attributed to earache. She was also developmentally delayed, even though she received neurostimulation techniques to support early childhood development.
The Netcare Foundation, which works closely with the NGO High Hopes under the stewardship of Professor Claudine Storbeck is acutely aware of the importance of ensuring early hearing and its effect on speech, and neurodevelopment.
So, supporting this baby was an easy decision. Netcare offers a state-of-the-art programme in which all babies born in our facilities are afforded the opportunity to have their hearing tested.
Ear, nose, and throat surgeon Dr Quintus De Flamingh examined Grace and determined that her only viable treatment option was to have grommets placed in both ears. Grommets are small tubes that allow liquid to drain from the ear, helping to prevent ear infections.
Netcare Foundation and the doctors came to Grace’s rescue, and they arranged to cover the costs of the operation.
“Two days later, she was booked for surgery and within a week, we could see she was a totally new child. She started crawling for the first time, as her ear problem had heavily affected her balance, and she is making up for lost time.”
Murphy said Grace recently woke up in the middle of the night, “She was not crying, but she was bright-eyed and didn’t want to sleep. Suddenly, I heard a new sound coming from her cot – a sound I had never heard before. Our Grace was laughing for the first time ever, and it filled me with such joy.”
Pretoria News