Katherine's story

On 7th October 2016, Katherine Boulton suffered a major bleed on the brain and needed resuscitating. This resulted in 11 hours of brain surgery and she remained in an induced coma for three weeks thereafter; Katherine was 20 weeks pregnant at the time.

Since then, Katherine has regained consciousness, but was unable to breathe independently and so a tracheotomy was fitted to assist her. She was unable to move at all initially but, over the eight weeks that followed, she slowly regained the ability to move her left side and showed other signs of improvement. Katherine was fully aware and able to communicate ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ through blinks and was progressing steadily.

Sadly, on 8th December, Katherine’s tracheotomy became dislodged resulting in a cardiac arrest,
which took six minutes to revive her from. Since this time, Katherine has been kept sedated in intensive care to help her progress. Unfortunately, Katherine caught the Candida Auris infection, which entered into her blood and affected her blood pressure, heart rate and breathing; hence, the decision was made to deliver her baby on Christmas Day, at 31 weeks pregnant.

Phoebe was born weighing 4lb 6oz and is currently in the neonatal unit, receiving support with breathing and treatment for the same infection that her Mummy has. Katherine is not yet aware of the birth of her beautiful baby girl and will not be able to hold her and look after her in the way that she had dreamed. Phoebe will remain in the neonatal unit for another six to eight weeks.

Katherine has had to have numerous surgeries to drain fluid from her brain and will continue to need further surgeries in the future. At the moment, the doctors do not know what additional damage has been caused by the cardiac arrest, but have noted that she will need support for the rest of her life and will remain in hospital for a minimum of six months.

Katherine’s husband - Jamie - is balancing looking after their five year old son Ollie and visiting Katherine and Phoebe, who are at completely opposite ends of John Radcliffe hospital in Oxford. He visits four times a week, which takes around two hours each way and costs around £500 a month in fuel. When Phoebe is discharged from the hospital, Jamie will be continuing his visits to see Katherine, whilst looking after their little boy and new born baby too. He is also fighting to hold
down his job, in which he has had to reduce his hours, to allow time to visit Oxford during the week.

Katherine has spent her whole life working to support other people. She trained as a nurse and worked at a therapeutic children’s home for more than ten years, where she looked after young people who really needed her help. After becoming a Mum, she moved on to supporting young people in the community, by setting up and running events and youth clubs.

Now, after so many years of supporting others, Katherine really needs us to help support her and
her family.

We want to raise money for the whole family, initially to help towards the cost of diesel for Jamie to continue to visit Katherine and Phoebe at the hospital. We would also like Jamie to not have to worry about a reduction in his salary over this time and the loss of Katherine’s salary, which will impact enormously upon looking after the whole family and paying all the bills involved with
keeping a roof over their heads. We also know that they will need money to go towards Katherine’s rehabilitation needs in the future - whatever these are at the point she can be discharged from hospital.

Pheobe is a little Christmas miracle, please give anything you can to help support this lovely family.  We would be very grateful if you could share Katherine’s story with friends and family to help raise as much as possible.

Thank you.