{"id":185185,"date":"2018-07-15T10:04:35","date_gmt":"2018-07-15T15:04:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liveaction.org\/news\/?p=185185"},"modified":"2018-07-10T13:50:05","modified_gmt":"2018-07-10T18:50:05","slug":"oliver-saved-us-doctors-heart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/oliver-saved-us-doctors-heart\/","title":{"rendered":"Baby Oliver saved in U.S. after UK doctors said his heart couldn’t be fixed"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Most parents would readily cross oceans to save their child’s life, with no thought as to the cost or distance. But for some children in the UK, like Alfie Evans and Charlie Gard, that simply wasn’t an option they were given. Oliver Cameron is one of the fortunate ones, though, and thanks to the tireless efforts of his parents and doctors at Boston Children’s Hospital, Oliver is alive and thriving today<\/a>.<\/p>\n

When Oliver was born in the United Kingdom, he had a large, non-cancerous tumor in his heart, called a cardiac fibroma. It was so rare that doctors in the UK weren’t able to treat it. Only a handful had even seen it.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey couldn\u2019t treat the tumor in the U.K. because they didn\u2019t have any doctors with the right expertise,\u201d his mother, Lydia, said. \u201cThey said our only option was a heart transplant, but we thought there must be another route, so we started doing our own research.\u201d<\/p>\n

READ: Alfie Evans is just the latest victim in Europe’s culture of death<\/em><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Their research led them to Boston Children’s Hospital, where another little girl, Francesca, had successfully had her large cardiac tumor removed. Her story was posted on the Boston Children’s Hospital Facebook page the day after Oliver was born, which Lydia took as a sign. So she reached out to Francesca’s doctors, Dr. Pedro del Nido and Dr. Tal Geva, and sent Oliver’s records to them. They responded that he would be a good candidate for the surgery — even though the NHS doctors were insistent that Oliver’s tumor could not be removed. But the difficulties of getting Oliver treatment weren’t over yet; the Cameron family now had to find a way to pay for it.<\/p>\n

At first, the NHS refused to pay. \u201cOliver\u2019s cardiologist spent hours of his own time trying to get Oliver to Boston \u2014 he kept applying and reapplying for the National Health Service to cover the surgery in the U.S., but with no luck,\u201d Lydia said. \u201cSo, we started our own fundraising campaign, because we had no other way to get him there.\u201d But after they successfully raised most of the money, they got good news: not only would the NHS pay for the surgery, they would also send two cardiologists and a cardiac surgeon to learn from the doctors at Boston Children’s.<\/p>\n

In November of 2017, Oliver underwent the eight-hour surgery, which went better than expected. \u201cDr. del Nido warned us that they may not be able to remove the entire tumor because it was so large, but that he would remove as much as possible,\u201d Lydia explained. \u201cSo when they told us he had removed all of it, we were so happy we just burst into tears.\u201d<\/p>\n

The tumor ended up being one of the largest the doctors had ever seen.<\/p>\n