WATCH: Maltese Mum’s Painful Choice: ‘I Had To Miss My Dad’s Funeral To Take Care Of My Daughter’
A Maltese mother has opened up about a painful family decision she had to make recently, missing her father’s funeral because her daughter required constant care in the UK.
“I never came to Malta in the two years and two months [in which I was in the UK],” Ellie Portelli’s mother Jeclohan said in an interview with ONE TV. “I couldn’t take my daughter out because if she got sick and we received a call [from hospital], we’d have lost the liver. I lost my father a month ago and couldn’t even attend his funeral.”
Ellie, 3, had been diagnosed with Crigler-Najjar syndrome and spent over two years in the UK awaiting a liver transplant. On 3rd September this year, Jeclohan was finally informed that the right liver had been found and Ellie successfully underwent an eight-hour operation.
Ellie is now living in Malta and will require further treatment here and in the UK, but Jeclohan sounded an optimistic tone about her future prospects.
“She will get better in the future because I will make sure her future is bright,” she said.
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