Lyons preschooler Audrey Fawole was just three hours old and weighed 1.3 kilograms when she had life-saving surgery at the Canberra Hospital in 2018 to separate and repair an abnormal join between her oesophagus and trachea, otherwise known as a tracheoesophageal fistula.
At 20 days and weighing 100 grams more, she had more surgery, this time a groundbreaking procedure, the first of its kind in Canberra, in which keyhole surgery was used on her tiny body to correct a duodenal atresia, or gap in her small intestine.
Born premature at 29 weeks, without either surgery, she would have died.
Both operations were performed at the Canberra Hospital by Dr Rajay Rampersad, a paediatric surgeon at Canberra Health Services.
With Audrey's fifth birthday fast approaching next week, the little girl, a fan of Paw Patrol and Barbie, returned to the hospital on Friday to celebrate her continued good health with her hero surgeon.
Audrey reckoned Dr Rampersad was "amazing".
And what does she want to be when she grows up?
"A doctor and a nurse," she reckoned.
For Dr Rampersad, himself a father of four children with a fifth on the way, seeing Audrey not only surviving but thriving was deeply rewarding.
"I'm very happy to see that," he said.
"She had a rocky course, she had to have more operations than most prem babies but she's done very well.
"Kids are so resilient, even with major life-threatening conditions. And being able to help them on the path to a normal life is so rewarding - it's why paediatric surgeons choose this profession."
Dr Rampersad said it was also uplifting for the whole team that helped Audrey to get through - including the nurses and doctors in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit and the anaesthetist who had to be so precise as Audrey underwent surgery when just half the size of the average newborn.
Audrey's parents are both health professionals - mum Rowena is a nurse at the North Canberra Hospital and dad Jide is an emergency department staff specialist at Canberra Hospital.
But nothing could prepare them for the shock and terror of their daughter being born at just 29 weeks on November 23, 2018 at the Canberra Hospital.
She had been due to be born in February of the following year but that day in November Rowena noticed the baby was not moving as much and went in to the hospital to get checked.
"I went to work that day and had her that night," Rowena said.
The duodenal atresia, a condition that stopped liquids and food from passing through her stomach into the rest of her intestine, had been diagnosed before Audrey was born.
To fix that condition, Dr Rampersad performed groundbreaking laparoscopic surgery on Audrey when she was 20 days old, making her one of the tiniest babies to undergo such a procedure.
He said it was a complex, delicate procedure, the first of its kind in Canberra, but the keyhole surgery meant she was left with tiny nicks on her body rather than a big cut in in her abdomen and major scars across her torso.
"We have in paediatric surgery, four surgeons with the ability to treat complex and difficult conditions in Canberra," he said.
"We often have patients travelling to Sydney in the belief they will get better care, when the same care or sometimes better exists locally in Canberra."
Rowena said Audrey was fed with a tube for the first year of her life but now "eats anything and everything". Chocolate is her favourite.
While her health would be checked regularly, Audrey had no ongoing issues.
"She's fine, she's reached all her milestones, she's taller than average," Rowena said.
"She loves any music she can dance to. She's very social. She's the kid at preschool everyone wants to be friends with."
Rowena said the family owed everything to Dr Rampersad.
"You saved her life," she said to him.
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