A four-year-old girl who spent her life in a Missouri hospital due to a lung condition is returning home for the first time— just before Christmas.
Phalynn Graham had been born two months premature, causing her lungs to be undeveloped.
For the past four years, Phalynn required round-the-clock care and had to be connected to a ventilator to breathe. But her condition improved enough that the doctors at Ranken Jordan Pediatric Bridge Hospital in Missouri decided to discharge her on Thursday, allowing her to go home for the first time since she was born.
The hospital wrote on Facebook Friday that it was a “bittersweet moment” to send Phalynn home after she had been hospitalized for 1,208 days.
“It’s like un-explainable. I can’t even find the words,” Phalynn’s mother, Tarvarshay Graham, told KSDK.
Tarvarshay, like her daughter, also has health issues. She had been diagnosed with lupus, requiring her to go on dialysis three times a week. Because the mother could not look after Phalynn while receiving the treatments, the family was searching for a nurse to care for Phaylnn during those times.
Once the family found a nurse, the doctors at the hospital cleared Phalynn to go home to spend her first Christmas outside the hospital walls.
“Finally at home, [we] can hang out on Christmas with the family,” her mom said.