Girl Aged 5 Survives FOUR Heart Attacks in 45 Minutes After Reaction To Throat Infection

PAY-MAIN-ava-mear

A girl of five had four heart attacks sparked by a reaction to a sore throat – and lived.

Little Ava Mear turned a deep shade of purple as the rash spread over her body. And she ballooned in size after frantic doctors pumped her full of fluids in a bid to save her.

The horror reaction caused her heart to fail three times in quick succession. And when it happened for a fourth time in just 45 minutes, medics warned parents Clive and Mary-Jane to prepare for the worst.

But fighter Ava pulled through after she was hooked up to an artificial lung machine that oxygenated her blood and pumped it round her ailing body.

Photographer Clive, 44, said: “After her third heart attack a surgeon told us about a risky procedure they could try. I just cut him off. I said, ‘Do it, do it now.’

“Ava looked like Violet from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, bless her. She was purple from head to toe. She’s our little miracle.

“If she had been at a hospital with no ability to bypass her heart she wouldn’t be here today. My wife was like mush in my arms.”

Ava’s ordeal began on January 27 when she suffered a reaction to Strep A, a bacteria that caused her sore throat.

It started as a small rash but when the youngster started breathing heavily Clive and 42-year-old Mary-Jane, of Caddington, Beds, took her to Luton and Dunstable Hospital.

Worried doctors sent her straight to Great Ormond Street Hospital in London where she was put on the lung machine, called extracorporeal membrane oxygenation.

Ava, who has a 10-year-old brother Alfie, is now back at Luton and Dunstable and recovering well. The youngster also suffers rare condition Cerebro Costo ­Mandibular Syndrome, meaning she has no ribs at the front of her chest.

Her parents are now trying to raise £80,000 to buy two more ECMO machine for Great Ormond Street.