EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW AND PHOTOS
Watching their little girl posing for the camera, professional dancers James and Ola Jordan can’t help feeling emotional.
As robust as she seems now, it’s hard to shake off the knowledge that a few short weeks ago, the former Strictly Come Dancing professionals were sitting anxiously by Ella’s bedside after the three-year-old was rushed to hospital with a high temperature and found to be suffering from pneumonia and tonsillitis.
Posting a photograph on Instagram of his “little warrior” with an IV drip in her arm, James, 45, explained that Ella had been ill for five days before she was diagnosed and taken in for treatment, following two trips to A&E.
It wasn’t the first time she had fallen seriously ill, and now James and 41-yearold Ola exclusively reveal to hello! that medics may have identified the reason their daughter seems to be so susceptible to picking up bad chest infections and nasty colds: they fear she has a hole in her heart.
“The doctors at the hospital agreed that we need to find out why she keeps getting so sick,” James says, as the family enjoy the bright winter’s sun at Chilston Park Hotel in Lenham, Kent. “They say it could be a link with her heart issue, which we’ve never spoken about before.”
DIGGING DEEPER
Ola continues: “Ella was first diagnosed with a heart murmur a couple of years ago. Then, just before her second birthday, a doctor said: ‘I’m not sure about her heart; there’s a little hole that needs to be double-checked with another doctor.’”
“We were told that if she does have a hole in her heart, they can’t do anything until she’s older and stronger, so they suggested we wait,” James says.
A follow-up appointment next month should tell them more. “But it would be a massive operation,” he adds, gazing at his precious “baby girl”.
It was hard enough on the doting parents when they saw Ella, who turns four next month, become so poorly in December. After the cough she’d had for a couple of days got progressively worse and her fever spiked at 41°C, James and Ola were initially advised that it was a viral infection and told to let it run its course.
