Born premature with a chronic lung disease, Jett Davies had to be attached to an oxygen tank for the first three years of his life. Now he's the fastest kid at his school. And there's no more oxygen tank.
Part of the reason he is now a strong, healthy almost teenager is the care he received as a newborn at the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) at the Canberra Hospital.
Jett, who turns "13 in two months", made an emotional return to NICU on Friday, with his family, catching up with the nurses who looked after him as a newborn, including Alison Moore and Janine McEwan.
Another of the nurses who cared for him, Tania Cilliers, told the now strapping lad she used to call him "Jett-Star".
"Because I always thought you were a little star," she said. "You were so brave."
Jett on Friday also made a remarkable donation to the Newborn Intensive Care Foundation, which fundraises to provide additional equipment and training to NICU. It was his way of saying "thank you".
"I was going to die but all the nurses saved me and I'm grateful for that," he said.
The considerate, rugby league-mad youngster raised $4200 for the foundation by cutting off his long hair, which he'd been growing since kindergarten, to look like his footy idol, Jarome Luai, from the Penrith Panthers.
Mum Melody started a GoFundMe page for "the big chop" and a cheque for the proceeds was delivered to the Newborn Intensive Care Foundation chairman and founder Peter Cursley.
Jett's family, who live in Narrandera in southern NSW, was thrown into turmoil when he was born 32 weeks premature with a life-threatening lung disease.
The Canberra Hospital was the referring hospital, after Wagga Wagga, and Jett was born in Canberra and sent straight to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.
Jett remained in the Canberra Hospital for 14 weeks, on and off a ventilator. All up, he spent 291 days in hospital, with stints also at Westmead Children's Hospital in Sydney and Griffith Base Hospital.
Mrs Davies remembered during those days in Canberra, with her family four hours away in Narrandera, she received as much care and comfort from the staff as Jett.
"We were very well looked after and I was looked after just as much as Jett, so we had to give back," she said.
The family returned home for good when he was eight-months-old, but on the condition that for another 12 months he was on steroids and fed through a feeding tube every three hours.
For the first three years of his life, he was tethered to an oxygen machine via a nose prong and a 30-metre-long tube.
Now, about to start high school, Jett still takes preventative medicine and has three to six monthly check-ups but is otherwise doing well.
His mum Melody says they now spend a lot of time ferrying him from one sporting event to another.
"But we wouldn't change it," she said.
Newborn Intensive Care Foundation chairman and founder Peter Cursley said the $4200 donation from Jett was "amazing".
"We completely rely on donations like this," he said.
Mr Cursley said it was wonderful to see Jett doing so well.
"That to me is what it's all about," he said.
"It's tremendously rewarding to hear these stories."
Jett's family wanted to show others going through similar health battles that there was hope.
"While it feels really hard at the time, keep going and push through," Mrs Davies said.
Nurse Tania Cilliers summed it up when she told Jett on Friday: "You're still a Jet-Star".
