30th December 2012

Another day, another day that feels like I'm living in hell.

So his chest drains have been bleeding still, and since having another dose of surfactant the other day, and being made to lie on his drain sites for quite a few hours, he's now bleeding more again.

A chest X-ray revealed that the clots have returned, and they want to get them off before they go solid again.

The operation didn't take as long today, but it certainly felt it.

When he came back he was bleeding loads again, and I was beginning to feel ill! I couldn't believe that we were going to have to go through another lot of bad bleeding again.

Aydan had another chest X-ray and a decision was made.

Aydan couldn't go through all this again.

He was to be taken off the ECMO! I mean REALLY taken off the ECMO, they were going to take the cannulas out.

The consultants took us into another room and explained the situation to us.

Basically his right lung was as good as they could get it while on ECMO. But his left lung was now stuck in a vicious cycle. The heparin was making him bleed. He needed the heparin for the ECMO circuit, to stop that clotting, the bleeding was causing clots. The clots needed an operation to remove them....

We didn't know if Aydan would survive or not! His last 2 attempts of coming off ECMO weren't great!!!

Up to now he'd been on the ECMO machine for 5 weeks and 4 days. That's nearly 2 weeks longer than they said. And he was now the longest patient in Alder hey to have been on ECMO.

We were sent off the ward for the second time that day, and began waiting.

Well you know what, my little man made it!

He made it on to a normal ventilator with just his lungs helping him!

The next few days will be tense, as he could have a set back any time, and they've said that he won't be able to go back on ECMO again. His veins were too thin and had fused themselves to the ECMO cannulas.