Our eight-month-old baby boy, Luca, suddenly became very sick. What started as a quick trip to A&E at Southend Hospital quickly turned into every parent’s worst nightmare.
He was taken straight to the children’s ward and placed on an opti-flow machine to help him breathe. The doctors put cannulas in his tiny hands and watched him closely through the night. As the hours passed, Luca became weaker, and his breathing grew shallower.
The doctors and the PANDR ambulance team decided he needed to be sedated and put on a ventilator. I can still hear those words in my head. My heart sank, panic took over, but I nodded and told them to do whatever was necessary. Inside, I was breaking. Watching your baby go to sleep without knowing if he will wake up is something no parent should ever face.
Once sedated, Luca was taken by ambulance to the Royal London Hospital. When we arrived, he was admitted immediately to the Paediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU). Seeing him lying there, surrounded by wires, tubes, and machines, was unbearable. His tiny chest rose and fell with the help of the ventilator, and all I wanted to do was hold him and tell him how loved he was. My partner, Robbie, and I held hands tightly, terrified of what might come next.
Everything had happened so fast that we arrived at the hospital completely unprepared. We had no clothes, no toiletries, nothing. That first night, the hospital kindly gave us a bed on the ward so we could stay close to Luca. But by the next day, we were exhausted and panicked. That was when a nurse told us about Stevenson House, a ‘Home from Home’ run by The Sick Children’s Trust.
We had never heard of the charity before, but when we were given a room there, we felt overwhelming relief. It was the most meaningful gift at the hardest time of our lives.