A TODDLER suffering from two potentially life-threatening illnesses is recovering well after undergoing a second operation to help with her feeding.

Just a few weeks ago Amélie Chan had a Nissen Fundoplication which involves wrapping part of the stomach around the oesophagus and stitching it into place.

The three-year-old, of Amberhill Way, Boothstown, first underwent the procedure when she was just four months old but it failed because of her young age.

Amélie, who spent two days in intensive care for the operation, is fed liquid food straight into her intestines but because she has chronic lung disease and chronic reflux disease her gastric content was coming back up into her lungs.

The operation is designed to stop that.

Dad Darren, 44, who has three other children Fleur, four, Olivia, 12, and Gabrielle, 13, with wife Lesley, 40, said: "At the moment it is working and the surgery was a success but there are no guarantees.

"The last one lasted three months."

Amélie also suffers from CHARGE syndrome, which is named after the initials of its main symptoms including heart defects, ear problems and growth disorders, and Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy which causes excessive thickening of the heart muscle and is known as the ‘silent killer’.

Last year Advertiser readers raised £6,000 for a special chair and other equipment to help the tot.

Despite all her medical problems the Springwood School pupil is doing well in other aspects of her life and despite being registered blind and severely deaf she is learning sign language.

Darren added: "She’s doing really well with her learning abilities.

"She’s learning her own sign language and is picking it up brilliantly, she’s communicating with us and telling us what she wants - it’s great.

"We never imagined when they were giving us the diagnoses that we would get to this point.

"The medical side of things will always be there, there’s nothing we can do except manage it as best we can.

"We’ve met many families from around the world with relatives with CHARGE and if they can get through the medical side of things what they can achieve is unlimited and that gives us a lot of hope.

"She’s doing well and hopefully this operation will help her through winter which is a problem time because her immune system is low and she picks up infections easily."