18th November 2012

Aydan is currently full of cold, you know the drill, snotty nose, coughing etc.

So it's about 1.45am and he's been coughing constantly for the past couple of hours. I've brought him in to bed so I can keep an eye on him, but his breathing is around 50 breaths a minute and he's starting to sound wheezy :0( I decide to ring the paediatric ward, because although he only has open access for his seizures, I remember that last time he was wheezy he had one of the nasty seizures.

The nurse on the end of the phone was lovely and agreed that I should bring him in for a once over, even if for just to help ease my mind.

We finally make it to the ward after having to go through the miles of mazes that seem to be up at Leighton at the moment, and we start getting the millions of questions that make you have the involuntary eye rolls... And of course Aydan is being his usual monkey self and giggling his head off, clapping his hands, and jumping up and down in the metal cages like he's trying to win the world record for most jumps performed in a minute on the trampoline...

The doctors after seeing him and listening to his chest etc. decide that he's got a cold, but because of his history they decide to keep him in over night and to assess him again in the morning. It's now quarter to 5 so there's not much left of the night anyway!!!

I finally get him to stop bouncing in his cot and get him to drink some of his milk, then when he's finished I lie on one of those horrid brick feeling pull out beds and get comfy, and talk to my friend on Facebook for a bit who is also still awake!

That's when I notice it, his breathing has gone into super drive, so I creep slowly over with the ever hope that he's just having a rather pleasant dream, but no, eyes are staring into space and that's when the whole body twitching starts and the awful breathing! (For anyone who has heard a tonic clonic/grand mal, this is a very familiar breathing pattern!) after yanking the emergency button it's like hitting a confused and slow mo button, because everything then suddenly becomes slow, but at the same time everything becomes all muddled and confusing!

So I got the gist that the seizure started at approximately 5.05, I don't actually know when it stopped because things all started happening after one another and it became like a domino effect! I also couldn't be in the same room with him all the time because watching your child being jabbed with pointy things like a porcupine caught in a hurricane, isn't the most pleasant thing to watch!!!

I DO KNOW that the seizure went on for over an hour because I had someone come to tell me that because the seizure had gone on for so long, and because his blood gases had been at a dangerous level for so long, they were going to ventilate him, to help speed his recovery, and transfer him to an ICU somewhere.

At some point Aydan, who although had finished his seizure, still hadn't fully come around, was sick (aspirated) and it ended up going into his lungs. This in turn caused him to have a cardiac arrest. They decided to call me in at this point and I got to witness the pleasure of him having his heart massaged, which to me looked more like they'd got some bread and was kneading it! This is something which you don't want to have to see being done to your child either! You know he's got no heart beat, you know that they are helping, but my, I think my own heart stopped as I stood there in complete fear, watching and waiting.

They got it working again though, the kneading and the shot of adrenaline helped of course!

The ambulance arrived at some point after to take him to a children's hospital with an ICU, but Aydan was still unstable to travel.

These nurses and doctors, I have an AWFUL lot of respect for them, for what they did for Aydan, between every single one if them that helped, and I'm talking hours here, nearly half a day, every single one of them did their very best to keep him alive!

Over the next few hours they did all sorts to him!

They tried to ventilate him but it didn't happen, a chest X-ray later revealed that the kneading to his chest had caused some holes in his chest so he was leaking air into his chest cavity and he ended up with 4 chest drains and about 10 chest X-rays!

He had canulas put in different parts of his body, including one that went into the bone marrow on his leg, and another sinister looking one in his groin!

The staff were still struggling to stabilise him for transport, we were warned at this point that he was most likely going to die, that he was really really poorly and was suffering with cardio and respiratory failure. Now here was my mistake, on the inside I felt like my life was over, my heart was hurting and breaking so much that I thought I wasn't going to be able to breathe ever again. I hope that any of you readers have never had those words said to you before, but hearing those words when its regarding your own child is unbearable!!!

On the outside I looked calm and unphased, and that was my mistake, because I had to hear those words repeated over and over again, they were trying to drill into me how serious the situation was, I heard, and I understood from the beginning, but I had my concrete face on. I have to be strong for my little man, I deal with my emotions later, when I have time to.

They eventually managed to get him stable enough to move him, but they warned me that he still might die in the ambulance.

That was the longest 45 minute journey in my life as we were blue lighted to hospital in an ambulance.

By now my Facebook was covered in beautiful pictures of people from all around the world who had lit candles for him, and were praying for him to survive! The support from even strangers was over whelming!

But you know what! HE MADE IT!! He got hooked up to a ventilator that helped him and was put on meds to sedate and paralyse him, along with many other drugs, blood, and minerals!

I truly believe that if it wasn't for all the help that everyone did for him that day he wouldn't have made it! I'd like to think that they will read this one day, and will feel appreciated for what they did for us :0)

Here is a picture of my little man in ICU