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AS an anxious 100-year-old Susie Bignell was being wheeled into the operating theatre for a high risk hip procedure she feared may be her last, anaethetist Andrew Foster had little idea that just hours later he would be helping deliver Ms Bignell’s great-great granddaughter in dramatic circumstances.
On May 21, Susie was rushed to the Millicent and District Hospital after she fractured her hip in a fall at the Hart Court aged care facility.
She was transferred to the Mount Gambier Hospital where she was assessed by a concerned orthopaedic surgeon Barney McCusker and anaesthetist Andrew Foster, who advised Susie’s family she was a “very high risk” to operate on due to a thinned aorta.
“They didn’t think mum would make it through the operation and that if they gave her the anaesthetic she would die under the strain of it,” Susie’s daughter Margaret Young said.
Margaret was faced with two options – she could risk the surgery or let her mother return home where she would be bedridden.
Two days later a series of tests were conducted and Margaret received a phone call from the hospital informing her that, with her consent, they could go ahead with the operation.
That evening Mr McCusker operated on Susie and much to everyone’s relief, beat the odds.
Meanwhile, at 7pm, as she was coming out of the operating theatre, her great granddaughter in-law Brooke Parry was admitted to the same hospital to be induced as her unborn baby was eight days overdue.
Brooke was induced by Dr Peter Charlton and with the assistance of Dr Foster, who was also the anaesthetist that assisted in Susie’s operation, an emergency caesarian was performed.
“It was like contractions on contractions,” Brooke said.
“The placenta didn’t have time to recover and the baby was stressed, so its heart rate dropped dramatically.”
“Daisy did not breathe for three minutes after birth.
“She had to be supplement fed because of low blood sugar levels.”
Brooke and her partner Craig Sunderland finally welcomed Daisy Margaret into the world in the early morning hours of May 24, and like her great-great grandmother, proved to be a fighter.
On Monday, May 27 Susie was transferred to the Millicent hospital and Brooke decided she wanted to do the same.
Susie settled in her room until the doctors visited and told her she would be moved because “a lady from Mount Gambier was coming with a newborn baby”.
To her surprise, it was Brooke.
“Nan had warmed the bed up for me,” Brooke said jokingly.
Brooke checked out a few days later, while Susie is still recovering in hospital.
Brooke Littlewood
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