Parents nominate surgeon for award after he saved son’s life
A surgeon told the parents of a seven-year-old boy minutes from death “I have God on my side and I will save him.”
Now the parents of Jackson Lee have nominated Shailinder Singh for an NUH People First Recognition Award.
“Mr Singh is the best,” said dad Matt. “The things that were put in place to save Jackson’s life were incredible and I will forever be in Mr Singh’s debt. It’s a miracle as far as I am concerned.”
Jackson, from Mansfield, was blue-lighted to QMC after he collapsed on the floor at King’s Mill Hospital A&E, where medics originally thought he had appendicitis or gastroenteritis.
Matt said: “They said ‘if we don’t get Jackson into a medically induced coma in the next couple of minutes, there is a good chance he will die. You can imagine how horrific it was to hear that as a parent. They whisked Jackson away and it took so long to stabilise him that Bec and I were convinced he had died.”
Jackson was then rushed to the QMC.
“We were told not to follow the ambulance, as they might need to stop and work on him on the way,” said Matt.
At QMC, mum Bec asked if she could see Jackson and was told no. “The nurse said ‘he’s got minutes to live and if I don’t take him now he won’t survive.’ It’s a parent’s worst nightmare, I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.”
Jackson was taken to the Paediatric Intensive Care Unit where Matt and Bec met Mr Singh.
“He was already gowned up and he said ‘don’t worry, God is with me, and I will save him,’” said Matt. “The doors burst open and Jackson was wheeled in – they didn’t even have time to take him to theatre. Mr Singh did the operation right there on the ward.”
Jackson had a hernia and a perforated bowel. Ten centimetres of his large intestine had pushed through the hernia, and had twisted and died, causing sepsis. Mr Singh cut out the rotting flesh and several litres of septic fluid were drained away.
Matt said: “One of the remarkable things for the first surgery, he used a saline bag to cover the wound as they didn’t have any artificial skin to cover the wound to stop it becoming infected. Jackson was going back down the next day to fit a stoma so they didn’t stitch him back up.”
Jackson now is a lively 11-year-old about to start secondary school at All Saints Catholic Academy in Mansfield in September. “If you didn’t know, you wouldn’t know that child nearly died,” said Bec. “The medical staff said his pain threshold is super super high so he hadn’t realised how ill he was. When they brought him round from the coma – after the surgery – they managed his pain with Calpol.”
Mr Singh was Assistant Professor of Surgery in Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research in Chandigarh, India, from 1987 to 1994. It was a quaternary institute, which delivered an extremely high level of very specialised and complex care to an area of India that was larger than the entire UK. He’s also held senior roles in Australia, America, and Kuwait.
He said: “Doing the operation this way enabled me to save a very sick child by operating on him on the trolley in the Paediatric Intensive Care Unit rather than taking them to theatre and giving him general anaesthetic and possibly losing them.”
Matt and Bec have nominated Mr Singh for a Nottingham University Hospitals Trust People First Recognition Award.
“If Mr Singh hadn’t been on call that night, when Jackson took ill, there’d be no Jackson,” said Bec. “Because I know not everyone would have done what he did – with all his experience, what he’s done in his career. I believe there’s no other doctor that would have done what he did and it’s because of that that we still have Jackson today.”
NUH People First Recognition Awards programme enables any member of staff or team to be recognised and rewarded across 12 categories. The deadline for this year’s awards is Friday 16 August.