85: The Hirschsprung’s Hour with Tom Richard - Episode 85

85: The Hirschsprung’s Hour with Tom Richard - Episode 85

How do people manage co-occurring mental and physical health issues while recovering? This episode of The Hirschsprung’s Hour focuses on Laura, a mum sharing her daughter Harriet’s intense journey with total colonic Hirschsprung’s disease.

From an apparently smooth pregnancy to emergency transfers between hospitals, Laura talks through those terrifying early days of green vomiting, missed meconium and the midwife who insisted, “Something’s not right here.” You’ll hear how bowel washouts became part of daily life, why an ileostomy eventually became unavoidable, and how enterocolitis kept dragging the family back into hospital just when things seemed to settle. The conversation doesn’t shy away from the emotional side.

Laura is honest about the isolation of parenting a medically complex child, the chaos of moving house while everyone had a stomach bug, and lying ill on a hospital pull-out bed while nurses tried to re-site Harriet’s cannula. Her line, “You can’t look after anybody until you can look after yourself,” sums up the heart of the episode: parental mental health matters just as much as medical protocols. There’s also hope and humour.

Harriet, nearly three, is described as “full of energy, full of life” and fascinated by her own stoma bag. Laura explains why she and her husband currently prefer to avoid further pull-through surgery, while accepting that Harriet may choose differently when she’s older. For parents of children with chronic conditions, health professionals, and anyone curious about Hirschsprung’s disease, this conversation offers candid detail, lived experience, and a glimpse of the emerging support network through Hirschsprung’s Disease UK.

If you’ve ever wondered how families keep going under relentless pressure, this story might be exactly what you need to hear today.