A 13-year-old Kambalda boy has returned to the Goldfields after fighting for his life in Perth Children’s Hospital after a Crohn’s disease diagnosis earlier this year.
Crohn’s disease is a type of inflammatory bowel disease which causes swelling of the tissues in the digestive tract, which can lead to abdominal pain, severe diarrhoea, fatigue, weight loss and malnutrition.
Brody Bennett’s mother Naomi told the Kalgoorlie Miner the teenager had been doing “really well” since returning home, while being on multiple steroids to help with the inflammation.
“Unfortunately, over the last couple of days, he’s been having a lot of pain from where he previously had bowel surgery,” she said.
Ms Bennett said Brody had been unwell for 12 months, with symptoms similar to gastroenteritis.
“Every few weeks he would get really sick and we just sort of thought it was gastro and then none of the other family would end up sick,” she said.
A naturopath was the first person the family reached out to, with Ms Bennett saying she hoped a change in diet might help Brody feel better.
“And then one day Brody ended up in excruciating pain in his bowels and we just said, ‘OK, we need to get him straight to hospital’ so we presented to Kalgoorlie and they flew us by RFDS to Perth Children’s Hospital. There he had an MRI which showed a massive abscess in his bowel,” she said.
“He went in for bowel surgery and also to have an endoscopy and colonoscopy which they discovered he had severe Crohn’s disease, he had a huge amount of inflammation.”
Ms Bennett said the family returned to Kalgoorlie-Boulder, thinking his Crohn’s would be “under control” and he was feeling well, which led him to eat a normal diet after three weeks instead of his liquid diet.
“It was very restricted, but it was him being able to eat rather than liquid and then he was on that for about three weeks and then suddenly, again, got very unwell, very dehydrated, couldn’t eat (and) couldn’t drink,” she said.
“When Perth received results of his blood test and stool samples, they asked for Brody to urgently come to Perth.
“His potassium levels were so low that he had blood clots in his blood. It was very scary at the time. He was really in a bad way. He was really unwell. He’d lost about seven kilos in a matter of a week, two weeks,” Ms Bennett said.
She stayed with the four other children, while her parents drove from New South Wales to care for the children.
“They got here and then I said hello and goodbye all in the same day and I jumped in the car and drove to be with Brody and my husband down in Perth,” Ms Bennett said.
Brody’s condition deteriorated as the injections he was receiving did not have the desired effect, but she said after an increased dosage he improved.
“He improved a lot and they allowed us to come home with his feeding tube so my husband’s been learning and helping out with that and flushing his line and playing nurse . . . He gets fed overnight because he was so malnourished when he presented to Perth and then he’s on a large amount of medication and vitamins and minerals, his potassium levels are quite low still.”
Ms Bennett said the family had been “completely blown away” by the support they received, with $16,000 already raised through a GoFundMe page.
“We never imagined such a tight-knit community (like Kambalda) to get behind Brody . . . We’re so grateful and especially to everyone in Kalgoorlie as well. My workplace and the Goldfields Children Charity, and everyone’s just been sending us messages of support,” she said.
“Ronald McDonald (House) is so overwhelmed at the moment with lots of families that there was no way to stay there. So we had to pay for accommodation and being right in the middle of the city where Perth Children’s Hospital is the accommodation is quite expensive. So (the fundraiser) just took the pressure off.”
Ms Bennett said everyone’s generosity was something the family would remember forever.
“We have a lot of families fly in and out and it’s always the ones that are here that put their hands up to help the most . . . you don’t realise how caring everybody is and everybody knows everybody in such a small town,” she said.
“There’s only one high school, Kambalda is not very big, but when something happens to one of their own, everybody rallies around and it makes us not want to leave.”