Amelia’s Christmas Eve Dash To Hospital

Imagine being excited for Christmas, having all your plans for the big day in place and all your presents bought, but then you find yourself in an ambulance with your child, being blue lighted to hospital in the early hours of Christmas Eve. It’s the stuff of nightmares, but for one family from Stourbridge, that’s exactly how they spent Christmas in 2023.

Amelia Talbot, seven, had been poorly since mid-December, suffering with an ear infection in both ears. However, the antibiotics she had been prescribed hadn’t helped and Amelia had started complaining of severe headaches, as well as becoming more and more lethargic as the days went on.

Her parents Zara and Daniel knew something wasn’t right and so they took her to her local hospital. After being checked over, she was sent home, but with instructions to return if she got any worse. They did just that on the 23 December, when they noticed Amelia’s right eye had started to turn inwards.

From there on, things moved quickly. She was rushed for an emergency scan which showed she had a severe blood clot on right venous sinus, which is one of the major drainage pathways in the brain. She would need surgery, and so the family were blue lighted to Birmingham Children’s Hospital at 1am on Christmas Eve. Amelia was first on the list of patients to be taken to surgery in the morning.

Her surgeon performed a mastoidectomy, drilling behind her ear to clean out the clot and infection and reduce the swelling on her brain, followed by a lumbar puncture to collect some spinal fluid.

Zara comments: “Amelia’s surgeon said she’s never seen a case like hers in 30 years, so we know just how lucky we are for the problem to have been spotted and for her to have had emergency surgery to fix it. We’ll be forever grateful. However, the whole ordeal was so scary and a complete whirlwind for us. We hadn’t had time to catch our breath, let alone think about being in the hospital over Christmas, we were just so focused on Amelia.”

Thankfully, donations to our charity at Christmas help to ensure all children staying with us get to experience some of the magic of the festive season, so they don’t miss out. On Christmas morning the next day, Amelia woke up to a sack full of presents and the family were treated to a Christmas dinner on the ward.

Amelia ended up spending three weeks in hospital and during that time there were lots of fun activities to help make her stay fun. There was a visit from the Fire Service with one of their big red engines, there was arts and crafts on the wards, and on New Year’s Eve, there was even a party for patients in the hospital’s Play and Admission’s Centre.

Zara continues: “I took Amelia down to the party as she was feeling well enough. The DJ put on ‘A Million Dreams’ from The Greatest Showman soundtrack and Amelia just lit up. She started smiling and singing. I welled up – it was the happiest she’d been since we arrived.

“This wasn’t the Christmas we envisaged, but we were so thankful to everyone at the hospital and charity for helping to make it special for us.”

A year on, and Amelia was doing so much better. She was back to her normal, quick-witted self, enjoying reading and playing with her pet rabbit, Peanut. She’s still under the care of the Ear, Nose and Throat (ENT) and Neurosurgery teams at the hospital but was discharged from the Eye Department in summer 2025, as her eye has completely corrected itself.

To celebrate her progress and say thank you to the hospital for the care she received, she decided to fundraise over the school holidays. She decided she would scooter one mile every week over the six-week break and managed to raise an incredible £637 for other sick kids at the hospital like her.

Zara said: “Scootering a mile a week doesn’t seem like a lot, but for Amelia who has been through so much, and has had to be very careful not to injure herself due to her blood thinning medication, it was a real challenge. I’m just so proud of her for her strength and determination, and thankful to the hospital for helping us get to this point.”