Baby survives seven heart attacks and 20-minute death
He's only nine months old.
Yet baby Keelan-John Owen-Marston has come back from the brink of death not once but seven times.
He has a condition so rare (Laryngeal cleft, which fuses his air pipe and food pipe) that only two others in his country suffer from the same problem.
To date, he has survived seven heart attacks.
At two months old, Keelan had a major operation at Alder Hey Children's hospital in Liverpool to separate the two pipes. He endured a tracheostomy and now has a pipe in his windpipe to ease breathing.
He is fed through a food pipe fixed permanently into his stomach.
Doesn't cry
His mother Hannah Owen said: "I haven’t heard him cry since he was born.”
She did not realise there was a problem until worried doctors diagnosed her "little soldier" with the condition, Mirror reported.
Ms Owen said: “It’s very rare. There are only two other people... in the UK with a child with this condition. Most others are in the US.”
Keelan died for 20 minutes in January but was brought back to life by the doctors.
"He’s had seven cardiac arrests in total. But, bless him, he’s alive, and that’s all that matters.”
Keelan, who's currently home, has only spent two weeks our of hospital because of his difficulties with his heart, breathing and digestion.
Despite going through so much trauma, Keelan still smiles like any other carefree child.
“He’s a happy baby. The first thing he does in the morning is smile,” his mother said.
Hannah and her husband Ian Marston have two other children, daughter Ashanti, four, and son Donovan, six, who has autism.
Sources: Daily Post, Mirror
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