Miracle flight saves baby Theo

The tip-off that something was wrong came at 5.30pm the previous day, Steph said.

“He was clammy and sweaty, getting blue of the lips and short of breath — you could just see that something wasn’t quite right,” she said.

Steph is a nurse at Echuca Regional Health, so when she walked in carrying Theo and her co-workers swarmed him, she knew it was serious.

“We were taken straight into the resuscitation bay, surrounded by more than 10 staff within moments,” she said.

“It was reassuring to see so many ED staff surround our baby, but also frightening, knowing how serious it must be to have so many medical professionals be around him in minutes.

“When we got told that he would be transferred out … we knew something definitely wasn’t right.”

With more questions than answers, Steph and Andrew were told Theo would be taken to the RCH, escorted by the Paediatric Infant Perinatal Emergency Retrieval team – essentially an intensive care unit in the sky.

At about 8.30pm Theo’s parents followed his ambulance as he was taken to the Echuca Aerodrome and loaded on to a helicopter.

“We had to wave goodbye to our baby in Echuca, placing all our trust in a team we had only just met,” Steph said.

“It was heartbreaking.”

While Theo soared 5000 feet above, Steph and Andrew spent a gruelling two hours driving down the Calder Hwy towards a destination they never imagined they’d visit.

At the hospital, they watched Theo inside the ICU from afar as nurses, doctors and cardiologists worked tirelessly around him.

For nurse Steph, knowledge was pain, and just watching was torture.

At one point, Theo was on about 10 intravenous medications.

“I sort of understood what they were doing when they got certain equipment,” she said.

“At one point when they couldn't get IV access in the hospital, and they pulled out the special intraosseous gun to get it into his bone.

“So, when I saw that, I was like, oh, gosh.”

Before dawn, sitting in the cardiologist’s office, the doctor told them Theo “most likely” had a coarctation of the aorta — a critical narrowing of the heart's main artery — and surgery could not wait.

Surgeons operated on Theo’s walnut-sized heart the day after Valentine’s Day, and the following afternoon he was able to breathe by himself for the first time in days.

Steph and Andrew spent two weeks of their lives in the cardiac recovery ward as Theo gained strength before they were able to bring him home.

At a follow-up appointment, Steph and Andrew were told Theo had a bicuspid valve with a murmur.

Knowing the root of the problem was a relief, but reality quickly kicked in: this was a condition he would live with for the rest of his life.

“It’s heartbreaking because you always want your kid to be healthy and live a happy life. We’ll see (doctors) yearly now, for however long,” Steph said.

Thirteen months after that frightening night, Theo has just started to walk.

He regularly sees a cardiologist and is “exceeding their expectations”.

For Steph and Andrew, every wobbly step and every milestone hit is a living reminder of why the Good Friday Appeal exists.

The funds don’t just go into a general pot; they go towards the next PIPER helicopter flight, the next world-class cardiologist and the next Theo who arrives in the middle of the night needing a miracle.

“I can’t speak highly enough of the hospital and the Good Friday Appeal,” Steph said.

“It is an incredible fundraising charity that supports vulnerable children and families during unimaginable times — just like ours — bringing communities together to fund life-saving care, equipment and vital research.”

She encouraged the community to think of the families who got to come home because of that care.

As he stumbles around the backyard, Theo is walking, growing and living proof of what a community can do when they dig deep.

For the De Cicco family, the miracle didn’t just happen in a sterile operating theatre – it started with a helicopter flight and a town that made sure it was ready to fly.