Baby Louie will receive the most precious gift from his dad today: The gift of a liver and with it, the gift of life.
He's being prepped for his transplant surgery, which will be led by Professor Stephen Munn.
In the theatre next door - dad's operation is already underway.
The lead surgeon is Dr Peter Johnson - and with him is Dr Adam Bartlett. The rest of the team are anaesthetists and nurses.
This is a nerve wracking time for them, working on a live donor, who's perfectly healthy.
Louie has an extremely rare liver condition that would otherwise kill him or leave him brain damaged. It allows poisons to run freely through his body. Dad's new liver should put a stop to that.
The surgeons are literally cutting the liver in two, leaving most of it behind and about a quarter of it will go to Louie.
After around four hours Louie’s piece of liver is removed, weighed, and put on ice
Then it is wrapped up carefully - put into a box - and walked next door to Louie’s operating theatre.
Professor Munn and his colleague Dr Phil Morreau are working on Louie.
First, they carefully remove the sick liver.
“He can survive without a liver for probably 6, 8, 10 hours, something like that. We're not going to leave him without a liver for that long, but he can survive perfectly well,” Professor Munn says.
And then starts the extremely delicate operation of putting the new liver into his tiny body.
Some of his vein and artery joins are just millimetres in diameter.
“The blood flow into the artery is the single most important bit and then after that once we're very happy with all of that, we do the bile duct, that's the last thing to be done,” Professor Munn says.
It is a really tough day for mum. Her husband and baby going under the knife for around 12 hours altogether.
But the Charles family want people to learn from their story - and see the gift of life you give with organ donation.
He's being prepped for his transplant surgery, which will be led by Professor Stephen Munn.
In the theatre next door - dad's operation is already underway.
The lead surgeon is Dr Peter Johnson - and with him is Dr Adam Bartlett. The rest of the team are anaesthetists and nurses.
This is a nerve wracking time for them, working on a live donor, who's perfectly healthy.
Louie has an extremely rare liver condition that would otherwise kill him or leave him brain damaged. It allows poisons to run freely through his body. Dad's new liver should put a stop to that.
The surgeons are literally cutting the liver in two, leaving most of it behind and about a quarter of it will go to Louie.
After around four hours Louie’s piece of liver is removed, weighed, and put on ice
Then it is wrapped up carefully - put into a box - and walked next door to Louie’s operating theatre.
Professor Munn and his colleague Dr Phil Morreau are working on Louie.
First, they carefully remove the sick liver.
“He can survive without a liver for probably 6, 8, 10 hours, something like that. We're not going to leave him without a liver for that long, but he can survive perfectly well,” Professor Munn says.
And then starts the extremely delicate operation of putting the new liver into his tiny body.
Some of his vein and artery joins are just millimetres in diameter.
“The blood flow into the artery is the single most important bit and then after that once we're very happy with all of that, we do the bile duct, that's the last thing to be done,” Professor Munn says.
It is a really tough day for mum. Her husband and baby going under the knife for around 12 hours altogether.
But the Charles family want people to learn from their story - and see the gift of life you give with organ donation.
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