His mother calls him 'a miracle baby' and the surgeon who saved his life said he should never have survived. But somehow, against all the odds, Flynn Melton is alive and well.
Flynn, 7, was born with a blockage in his windpipe and required an emergency tracheostomy at birth. This involved surgeons creating a surgical opening in his neck and windpipe to create an alternative airway. Flynn was delighted when his tracheostomy tube was successfully removed at John Hunter Hospital in February.
'I'm most excited about being able to learn to swim,' Flynn said. His mother, Taylor Johnson, said her son was a 'very energetic, happy and beautiful boy'. 'He loves everybody. I just think he was put on this earth for a reason,' said Ms Johnson, of Lower Belford in the Hunter Valley. 'We are very grateful to everyone at John Hunter, especially Dr Niall Jefferson and the team that got us to where we are now.'
Dr Jefferson is Flynn's ear, nose and throat specialist and airway surgeon. He performed the tracheostomy at Maitland Hospital when Flynn was born in 2019. He was also the surgeon who removed his trachy tube this year. After Dr Jefferson removed the tube, he said Flynn 'sat there and smiled'. 'He's thriving. It's fantastic. He's such a rambunctious, awesome little kid,' Dr Jefferson said. He said many specialists had helped Flynn over the years. 'Flynn represents the best of John Hunter,' he said.
When Flynn was born at Maitland Hospital, doctors tried to intubate him. 'They couldn't get the tube down his nose and throat to get him to breathe because of the blockage in his windpipe,' Ms Johnson said. He had a condition called laryngeal atresia, which meant there was no connection between his mouth and lungs. Dr Jefferson said 'the only thing that kept Flynn alive was he had a tracheoesophageal fistula'. This abnormal connection between his windpipe and food pipe allowed just enough air into Flynn's lungs to keep him alive.
As he struggled to breathe at Maitland, the newborn emergency team at John Hunter was contacted. When Dr Jefferson arrived at Maitland, Flynn was clinging to life. 'I'll never forget it. He was this tiny little thing. He was blue. I didn't think he was going to survive,' Dr Jefferson said. 'We opened his airway and put a tube in. As soon as we did, he pinked right up. It was astonishing. We secured him and transported him back down to John Hunter. That was the beginning of the journey.'
Flynn spent his first three weeks receiving critical care at John Hunter's neonatal intensive care unit, before being transferred to a ward. 'We stayed in hospital for 53 days,' Ms Johnson said. She and Flynn's dad Scott Melton 'were keen to get out of hospital'. 'So we learnt everything we could to try to get this boy home,' she said. Soon after Flynn was born, Ms Johnson saw him looking 'the colour of the sky'. As he was taken away for critical care, Ms Johnson had an out-of-body experience. After shaking uncontrollably, she had the sensation of 'looking down at myself'. 'I knew something was wrong with Flynn, but they kept telling me it's all right,' she said.
Over the years, Flynn has faced multiple surgeries and continuing treatment. 'We've had a few scary moments, ambulance trips and a helicopter ride,' Ms Johnson said. 'We didn't let that stop us from doing stuff like going camping and holidays. We've never taken him overseas, but we did what we could even though we had a lot of medical equipment.' With his trachy tube in, Flynn could breathe on his own. 'But he needed a suction machine for saliva and mucus. If he was blocked up, everything had to come out of that tube,' Ms Johnson said. 'When he was sick, it usually meant a hospital trip because he struggled to breathe.'
His windpipe blockage was below his vocal cords, so he couldn't speak. 'From when he was six months old, I started to learn sign language. He picked it up at nine months. He started signing back,' Ms Johnson said. 'That's how we communicated with him until he started to learn to talk at age four. After a surgery, they got his airway open enough that he could get air through and make sound. He's now caught up to his peers with language.'
Ms Johnson said it was 'liberating' now that his trachy had been removed. 'We can go on trips and don't have to cart everything around, or worry if he does get sick. It's a good feeling,' she said. 'Scott and I have been through a lot together, but it's made us pretty strong. We just moved on and do the best for our kids.' The couple have three kids - Maeve, four, and Lexi, two, along with Flynn.
