Latest news with #Lonni
ABC News
24-05-2025
- Health
- ABC News
The high-tech ECMO machine saving lives and giving families a chance to make memories
Warning: This story contains content that might upset some readers. Five-week-old Sidney Mahony lies in his mother Ashleigh's arms on a secluded balcony at the Queensland Children's Hospital on a summer's day in February. It's 3pm and time to say goodbye — way too soon after their first hello. Dad Lonni is here and Sidney's older sister Tully, then still a toddler. Other family and close friends have also arrived. Some of the hospital team who have cared for Sidney since his birth with a rare and severe heart defect are among the 20 or so people who have made their way to the hospital's seventh floor balcony, to support his family as he takes his final breaths. "It was a beautiful day," Lonni recalls, three years later. "Brisbane couldn't have turned it on any more." For most of his life, Sidney was attached to a machine known as ECMO — an acronym for extra-corporeal membrane oxygenation, a high-tech heart and lung machine. At the end, it's what allowed his parents some precious extra time to make memories with their baby boy. In other cases, such as 15-year-old Sunshine Coast teenager Byron Blackmore, it saved his life. Sidney and Byron are among more than 270 children who have been treated with ECMO since the Queensland Children's Hospital opened in 2014. ECMO patients are so critically ill, only about two-thirds survive. The hospital's three heart surgeons are the only medical specialists in the state qualified to place children on the machine, which has become a treatment of last resort. Queensland Children's Hospital director of cardiac surgery Nelson Alphonso says intensive care specialists will typically call on heart surgeons to place a child on ECMO in cases of severe heart or lung failure, or a combination of both, when all else has failed. "They only call us when the patient is really at death's door, to come and intervene," Dr Alphonso says. Occasionally, they'll move the baby to the operating theatre to connect them to the ECMO machine. But in most cases, there's no time. "The children are too sick to be moved and so we will place them on ECMO where they are," Dr Alphonso explains. "In some instances, we have to open the chest in the paediatric intensive care unit (PICU) and connect the baby to the ECMO machine. "Sometimes we put patients on when they're in a cardiac arrest situation, when they're undergoing chest compressions and being resuscitated." Sidney was about a week old in early January 2022, when he was first put on ECMO after being born with hypoplastic left heart syndrome, also known as "half a heart" because the left side of the heart is severely underdeveloped. He was also born with only one kidney. Towards the end of open-heart surgery to re-plumb his heart's right chamber — allowing it to take over completely from the underdeveloped left side — he suffered an unexplained leak in a key heart valve. Dr Alphonso had to repair the valve on the operating table. When Ashleigh and Lonni finally saw their baby after the operation, he was connected to ECMO — a machine several times his size. "I didn't really know what to expect," Ashleigh says. "There was a lot of blood … just seeing blood going through tubes, an open chest. "I know that they explain it to you, but when you see it in person it's really confronting — like this is your body working for you outside your body, keeping you alive. In simple terms, ECMO takes over the work of the heart and the lungs. It siphons blood out of the child, removes carbon dioxide and oxygenates it before sending it back to the body, giving the patient's heart and lungs time to rest and recover. Having their newborn attached to so many tubes and machines meant bonding was far from instinctual. Picking him up and holding him in their arms was impossible. But with help from hospital PICU staff, they were able to give him a bed bath, using wipes to wash tiny body, and change his nappy. "We wanted to treat it — the situation — the same as we would if we had Sid at home," Lonni says. "We weren't going to just be hands-off parents. That's not our approach. "We wanted to feel useful in some way." Ashleigh gets emotional as she speaks about the simple task of wiping Sidney's eyes when he could open them. "I found that was the best," she says. Tully, then aged 15 months, also spent time at the hospital most days to be with her brother. Sidney was eventually taken off ECMO and doctors returned him to the operating theatre to close his chest. "We thought the worst was over," Dr Alphonso says. But the next day Sidney's heart stopped. "He went into cardiac arrest in front of me," Ashleigh recalls, her voice trembling with emotion. Sidney was reconnected to the ECMO machine to give him every chance of recovering. But when his other organs started failing and his hands and feet went black, doctors met with Ashleigh and Lonni, who were already preparing themselves to farewell Sid. "At this point, you have to recognise in a way you're not prolonging life, but you're prolonging death," Dr Alphonso says. "Since death is inevitable, we usually place the baby in the parents' arms and then we stop the machine. You grow close to the family during all of these journeys. "It does take its toll on everyone." The hospital gave Ashleigh and Lonni time with Sidney to make memories before the ECMO machine was switched off. "We got a couple of extra days where we just got to lay with him in a big hospital bed, and not just his own, to actually cuddle our child and make it our space as well," Lonni says. Ashleigh wipes away tears as she recalls those last days with her son. "They really let us do as much as we possibly could," she says. "There were no limits. All the walls were down. It was like celebrating our son. We got really encouraged … to make memories and we definitely did." Like Sidney, about half of the children treated with ECMO at the Queensland Children's Hospital (QCH) have severe heart disease. Intensive care specialist Sarfaraz Rahiman, the hospital's ECMO service medical lead, says other common reasons children use the heart-lung machine include severe pneumonia and sepsis, a life-threatening response to an infection. "ECMO has dramatically revolutionised the way we look after children with severe heart and lung failure," Dr Rahiman says. "It's intensive care in the truest sense. It's one of the most complex and invasive treatments that we provide." He says children can be placed on ECMO for anywhere from a few days to more than a month. "We've had kids on ECMO for up to six weeks and some of them have done well after," he says. Dr Rahiman is also deputy director of the QCH's PICU, a large team of more than 300 people, including doctors, nurses and allied health workers, who work together to care for the state's sickest children. He says the unit has provided about 1.8 million hours of intensive care to more than 18,000 patients in the past 10 years. About 1.5 per cent of those were treated with ECMO. Maleny State High School student Byron Blackmore has no memory of his time on ECMO last year, but is grateful for the treatment that saved his life. "Without it, I wouldn't be here," the 15-year-old says. Byron bears a scar from neck to naval after two open-heart surgeries at the QCH last year for a genetic heart condition, known as hypertrophic obstructive cardiomyopathy, which causes the heart muscle to thicken. Although Dr Alphonso "cut out a lot of the muscle" in January last year, Byron required more surgery in June. He came out of the second operation critically ill and on ECMO. His mum Jemma Mays described the situation as "terrifying". "It was a pretty scary time for all of us," she says. "No one wants to see their child like that." When she asked Dr Alphonso whether Byron could die, he responded "he's a very, very sick boy". Byron was unconscious and unable to speak to his family for two weeks, but they played Broncos games on television and talked him through what was going on. "It was so hard not being able to have him talk to us," Jemma says. "We still spoke to him." His grandfather also sent a video of him singing Bob Marley's Three Little Birds — which includes the line "Every Little Thing's Gonna Be Alright" — that was played to the teenager in PICU. Byron's older brother Hayden, 21, drove to and from the South Brisbane hospital every second day from the Sunshine Coast to spend time with him. "He would just spend hours with Byron, holding his hand, helping the nurses reposition him, just loving him," Jemma says. Byron was weaned off ECMO and after 28 days in hospital was finally allowed home. He spent months recovering from the effects of being on the machine. "They said it would take about six months to recover from," Jemma says. "And because Byron has mild cerebral palsy as well, there was a lot of flow on effects he had with that. "He had tremors in his hands, and he's had to have a lot of physio. It's been such a big thing." But Byron is alive and asked how he's feeling, he says "amazing". Two weeks after Sidney Mahony's death, his family's house at Oxley, in Brisbane's south, flooded during the 2022 deluge. "You're dealing with being in such flight or fight and shock of what's happened that when you lose your belongings, it doesn't feel like anything," Ashleigh says. "The grieving of the house was almost non-existent because Sid died." As they dealt with their trauma, it was Tully who helped them through their heartache. "Tully really saved us," Ashleigh says. "She was always the joy in the room. "I remember at the time being like: 'I'll be able to thank you when you're older for helping me.' She's been through a lot. She's very emotionally aware and a very caring girl." And then a year ago, Harlan was born. Nothing can ever replace Sidney, but Harlan's entry into the world has brought some healing. "A lot of my emotions and a lot of my grief were resolved in that moment of having to hold Harlan in my arms," Lonni says.
Yahoo
20-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
What happens in the ‘Andor' finale, and how it leads into ‘Rogue One'
WARNING: The following piece contains spoilers about Andor Season. It feels paradoxical that Andor is over. On the one hand, creator Tony Gilroy and his team have been working on the series since at least 2020, with various delays in production and release caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2023 Hollywood strikes, so now all that work has finally paid off. On the other hand, how can the most acclaimed Star Wars show be over after only two seasons, when other big-scale genre shows last for years and years? More from GoldDerby Taye Diggs on getting his groove back in 'Forever': 'This role was very therapeutic for me' Oscars producers reveal how Conan O'Brien made the 2025 show his own - and why they're 'fully in love' with the host 'Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning' reviews: What critics say about Tom Cruise's final (?) mission But because the end of Andor ties so directly into Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, which runs right into the original Star Wars, the show is now part of a chain of epic storytelling beyond any release. One result of that connectivity is that Andor viewers have known how titular hero Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) will die since before the show began. But plenty of other characters on the show aren't in Rogue One, so their fates have been open-ended. The final three episodes of Andor give those characters resolutions, starting with Luthen Rael (Stellan Skarsgård). The underground revolutionary has played a key role in forming the Rebel Alliance over two seasons. Still, his epic Season 1 speech about how, 'I burn my life to make a sunrise I'll never see,' indicated he was doomed to die in obscurity, and indeed he did — but not before making one last key contribution to the Rebel cause. After all, that epic speech was delivered to Luthen's Imperial Security Bureau mole Lonni Jung (Robert Emms) to convince him to keep delivering insider information. It worked, and in Episode 10, Lonni rewards Luthen with the biggest secret in the entire Empire: the Death Star. By accessing the files of Dedra Meero (Denise Gough), Lonni has learned that the Ghorman Massacre, the mining of Khyber crystals on Jeddah, and other Imperial activities are all connected in developing a massive new weapon. Lonni demands safety for himself and his family in exchange for this huge jackpot, but Luthen kills him. Luthen knows how vital this intel is and finally decides to leave Coruscant for the safety of the Rebel base on Yavin. But first, he needs to burn his headquarters so the Empire can't access all his information. In another excellent example of tactile technology on this show, we see Luthen pouring acid over his computers — and that's when Dedra walks in. After years of hunting and refusing to give up, she's found her 'Axis.' But if Dedra expected Luthen to spare himself the brutal treatment he's delivered to informants and acquaintances over the years, she gets served a rude awakening. He slits his wrists while she's not looking, but not before providing some beautiful final lines: 'You're too late. The Rebellion's not here anymore. It's flown away; it's everywhere now.' Dedra races Luthen to the nearest hospital, desperate not to lose her quarry before she can interrogate him, but again, she underestimates the Rebels' commitment to their cause. His longtime assistant Kleya Marki (Elizabeth Dulau) sneaks into the hospital, but to kill Luthen rather than save him. Before that happens, we're treated to flashbacks of a younger Luthen saving her as a young orphaned girl from a battlefield. This is a thematic Rogue One connection rather than a direct plot one, because it reveals that Luthen and Kleya had a similar adoptive relationship as the one between Saw Gerrera (Forest Whitaker) and Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones) in that movie. Kleya kills Luthen and is alive to tell the Rebellion the big news about the Death Star, but first, they must get her off Coruscant. Dedra's loyal assistant, Heert (Jacob James Beswick), has learned many lessons from his mentor and is doing a good job of hunting Kleya down. Luckily, Cassian and K-2SO (Alan Tudyk) arrive just in time to save her. Rogue One fans have been waiting two seasons to see Cassian and his droid best friend fight side-by-side again, and watching them take down a battalion of stormtroopers does not disappoint. Meanwhile, Dedra finds herself arrested and interrogated by her coworkers. In particular, Director Orson Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn) believes she is a traitor who leaked news of his Death Star project to the Rebels. Poor Dedra thought working harder than everyone else in the Empire would always get her ahead. Still, she didn't realize that working in an evil corporation means the person above you will throw you under the bus if it saves their neck, which is exactly what Krennic does. As Major Partagaz (Anton Lesser) notes later on, the Death Star should be finished by now, and Krennic's delays have now led to news leaking before it's even ready. Krennic scoffs that Partagaz 'sounds like Tarkin,' which is a second namedrop for an unseen Rogue One character after Krennic earlier asked Dedra how she learned about Galen Erso, Mads Mikkelsen's engineer from that movie who is building the damn thing. Dedra thought that by 'scavenging' every scrap of information she could find from across the ISB's operations, she could find 'Axis' and end the Rebellion in one fell swoop. Instead, putting all those secrets in one place allowed the Rebels to see them and set in motion events that will destroy the Death Star — there's that great chain of storytelling in action! Throughout Andor, viewers have seen how the extensive Imperial bureaucracy can be as much of a hindrance as an advantage. At the same time, Luthen's Rebels are fleet-footed and quick to adapt to changing dynamics. But with Luthen dead and the Rebellion now with an official leadership council in place on Yavin, we see how their gears are getting clogged up, too. Cassian expects his return with news of the Death Star to be greeted triumphantly. Still, instead, the leaders underplay the news (because, in fairness, it is horrifying) and diss Luthen now that he can no longer defend himself. But when Cassian insists, Senator Bail Organa (here played by Benjamin Bratt instead of the usual Jimmy Smits) approves him to go to Jedha and investigate this intel, where we will find him at the beginning of Rogue One. As for the other non-Rogue One characters: Kleya is safely ensconced on Yavin, while Dedra is sent to the same type of Imperial prison-factory that Cassian once escaped — how's that for just desserts? Like a samurai, Partagaz dies by ritual suicide behind a closed door. At the same time, Mon Mothma's topknot-sporting ex-husband, Perrin Fartha (Alastair Mackenzie) takes some new mistress (or perhaps even second wife) home in his flying car while he sadly drinks liquor. Best of all, Bix Caleen (Adria Arjona) is still alive, and she's not alone. She's holding a baby, which adds another dimension to her decision to leave Cassian when she did. If he knew he had a child to protect and raise, maybe he wouldn't have been able to make the selfless sacrifices that would save the galaxy from the Death Star. This is Andor's final surprise: It turns out that viewers didn't know how Cassian's story would end after all. Heroes can die, but legacies live on. Somewhere out in the galaxy, there's always a new hope. Best of GoldDerby 'It's very daunting': Luke Kirby on taking the lead in 'Étoile' after playing 'vampire' Lenny Bruce in 'Mrs. Maisel' Taye Diggs on getting his groove back in 'Forever': 'This role was very therapeutic for me' 'The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power' star Charlie Vickers breaks down Sauron's emotional reaction to killing Celebrimbor Click here to read the full article.
