A fundraising drive for a Dundee toddler’s life-changing surgery has smashed its target thanks to a “fantastic” £30,000 cash boost from a mystery donor.
The anonymous donation means Oliver Bosch will fly to Verona in a fortnight for a pioneering auditory brain stem implant with the initial £60,000 appeal target met.
Parents Jemma and Ben Bosch have been raising money to fund the Italian surgery for their one-year-old son, who doctors found had no auditory or balance nerves.
Jemma told the Courier: “It’s absolutely fantastic this money means we are covered for the operation and for the next year of fine tuning for the device.
“When we were told about the new donation, it was amazing, although it wasn’t out of the blue. It was something we had pursued ourselves, but for the people to come back and give us that amount of money was great.
“We had asked for £15,000, because that was how much we were off our target for the actual surgery. When they came back and said they would give us £30,000 it was this total sense of relief.
“It meant that we had nothing to worry about fundraising for the next wee while.
“We can go to Verona in a fortnight and know that we have the money to pay for everything and we can start the fundraising afresh when we come back for his speech therapy. It is a big relief for both for us.”
Oliver has Goldenhar syndrome, a condition affecting one in 500,000, and is unsuitable for a cochlear implant.
A huge fundraising campaign has been under way since the summer to pay for the operation by leading surgeon Professor Vittorio Colletti.
Oliver’s implant will have no wires or batteries attached, making it much easier for him and his family to lead a normal life.
Jemma said: “It’s the small donations that have got us to where we are now.
“I think without having this amount of money already raised the people probably wouldn’t have given us as much. I think they have seen that we have gone out and done it and how much the public have been behind us.”
Despite meeting the initial fundraising target, the appeal will continue after the family return from Italy.
Jemma said: “We will have to raise money when we come back for specialist audio-therapy. We had hoped that NHS in Manchester would take on Oliver’s follow-up and his tuning over the next year, because he has to go back for six tuning sessions in the first year to get the device turned up to its maximum capacity.
“Manchester said no, so that means we will have to fly to Italy six times over the next year and it will cost us £3,000 a time, because we will have to pay privately for it.”
In the meantime, Jemma said the focus was on the operation itself in just under three weeks.
She said: “Oliver will go into the hospital just to get a couple more wee tests done. They will then give him IV antibiotics over the next few days and on February 25 he will have his operation.
“He will be in intensive care for a couple of days after that and they will keep him sedated. Roughly four weeks after the operation the device will get switched on.
“We have plans to video that and get a professional web page set up so that people can follow us online and see his progress while we are in Verona.”