Three-year-old Declan Thomas has been in and out of the operating room, even undergoing open-heart surgery at the early age of six weeks old. During this surgery, he sustained a vocal cord injury and came home with a tracheostomy and a g-tube. Once he was discharged, his mother found German Digoy, M.D., a pediatric otolaryngologist at INTEGRIS Health, as well as other specialists within the INTEGRIS Health system.
Three-year-old Declan Thomas has been in and out of the operating room, even undergoing open-heart surgery at the early age of six weeks old. During this surgery, he sustained a vocal cord injury and came home with a tracheostomy and a g-tube. Once he was discharged, his mother found German Digoy, M.D., a pediatric otolaryngologist at INTEGRIS Health, as well as other specialists within the INTEGRIS Health system.
"Our first stay at INTEGRIS Health Baptist Medical Center was following a resuscitation episode from his trach," Annelyse Thomas, Declan's mother, says. "The ICU doctors, along with Dr. Digoy, realized he was in the wrong trach size and started making adjustments to his care."
Since then, Dr. Digoy has played a huge role in Declan's care, resulting in lots of time spent at INTEGRIS Health Baptist Medical Center. Annelyse is happy they found INTEGRIS Health. "With each stay, the staff has been amazing. From the ladies at check in, to pre-op nurses, child life, PACU, respiratory therapists and, of course, our PICU team," Annelyse says. "Every stay has been easy, welcoming and just an overall great experience."
Another part of Declan's journey has been Beads of Courage, a program dedicated to honoring children who undergo medical challenges by gifting them beads as a symbol of courage and bravery. Each medical procedure has a correlating bead. Erica Frankfurt, a certified child life specialist at INTEGRIS Health Children’s, recommended the Beads of Courage program to Declan and his family.
"Together we discussed every procedure he had up to that point. Included in that were CT scans, multiple echoes, open-heart surgery, a trach placement, g-tube placement, several X-rays, therapies, IVs, medicines and so many others. Erica came back into our room with so many beads. I was shocked to see the physical representation of all my little guy had been through."
Last summer, Annelyse strung the beads together, totaling over 15 feet of beads once she was finished. She says she's excited for Declan to have these beads to visually document everything he has gone through and overcome.
One of the most recent procedures he underwent was removing his tracheostomy in September. Since then, Declan has been on the move, according to Annelyse. "He’s such a typical toddler that is exploring and testing boundaries. He loves dance parties with his siblings (or really anything they’ll do with him), wants to spend all the time outside and is always down for a good game of hide and seek."
Declan's family is excited to see him grow into his newfound freedom, and they look forward to continuing to collect his beads of courage with the hopes of "graduating" from needing them.
INTEGRIS Baptist Medical Center has provided high quality life-saving pediatric services for the sickest of the sick children in our state for more than three decades. Yet despite countless success stories and eternally grateful families, the pediatric medical staff at INTEGRIS often referred to themselves as the “best kept secret in Oklahoma.”
