A toddler born with his internal organs on the opposite side of his body is going home for the first time just before his second birthday, the Daily Mail reported.
Kian Hill, was born on August 7, 2009 with situs inversus totalis, which means his internal organs developed on the wrong side of his body.
Doctors gave Kian a 50 percent chance of survival and last year, after suffering two cardiac arrests in two days, he was declared clinically dead for 30 minutes.
The condition, affecting one in 10,000 people in the UK, usually means patients need 24-hour care and spend their lives in the hospital.
Kian was also missing a right lung, spleen and appendix when he was born.
His mother, Natalie Boughey, 22, had a normal pregnancy, but when Kian was born, doctors found that his heart was on the right-hand side of his body and was also backwards.
“I had seven scans while Kian was in my womb, and they didn’t pick up any problem,” Boughey, a trainee nurse, said. “But I could tell that something was wrong.”
Boughey and her partner, Craig Hill, 27, an ambulance driver, had even planned Kian’s funeral.
Kian has undergone dozens of operations on an almost daily basis since he was born nearly two years ago, including a risky operation when he was just over 7 months old, which doubled the width of his windpipe.
Kian will need monthly check-ups, but is expected to live a normal life.
He will join his parents and brother at home, where the couple added an extension to accommodate their son’s medical equipment.
“We will have a lot of the same medical equipment at home than he does at the hospital but he is gaining in strength to come home.” Boughey said. “We don’t know how long he will have to be connected to the equipment.”
“We just can’t wait to get Kian home,” Boughey said. “He is such a sweet little boy, he’s been through so much pain, he never stops smiling.”