Hero of the Week #1

Welcome to my brand new meme, Hero of the Week. First things first, here are the rules:

1. Grab the image above, and save it to your own blog or web space.
2. Create a blog post nominating your hero of the week.
3. The Hero of the Week can be anyone, from someone you know, to someone you've heard/read about, who you think is worthy of hero status. As I'm all for loose interpretation, your hero can be a group of people, not just an individual. It can be a company, organization, etc. It can even be an animal who you feel has done something heroic.
4. Please include the above image, and a link to this blog, in your entry.
5. Come back here and leave me a comment to let me know you're participating.
6. Visit others!

Okay, with the rules out of the way, I'd like to nominate Dr. Malcolm Coulthard and Nurse Jean Crosier as my heroes of the week. Based at Newcastle's Royal Victoria Infirmary, Dr. Coulthard and Nurse Crosier didn't just go the extra mile to save the life of a young patient - you could say they went the extra light year.

Their newborn patient, Millie Kelly, was born with a condition called gastroschisis. Her bowels had developed outside her body. She needed an emergency operation to correct the problem. Sadly, Millie went into kidney failure during surgery. Weighing just a smidgen over 6lb, there wasn't a dialysis machine available anywhere that was small enough for her. She was too tiny even for machines designed for children. Millie's mum, Rebecca, was told her baby would probably die.

However, Dr. Coulthard and Nurse Crosier weren't prepared to let this happen. What did they do? Well, they designed a tiny kidney dialysis machine, then put it together in their own time, outside the hospital. Little Millie was hooked up to the dialysis machine for a week, which gave her kidneys enough time to recover from the trauma of surgery. Millie is now a normal, happy, healthy two-year-old. Isn't that amazing? You can read more about the whole story here.

That's my Hero of the Week award nomination for this week? What's yours? I really hope you'll play along. I shall sulk if you don't :).