We have finally “freed the city one”!!

As the title suggests we have finally got Daniel discharged from hospital, he is no longer an “in-patient”.

As many of you will know this journey started back in April 2006 when we first found out about Danny’s problems.  It felt as though the bottom had just fell out of our whole world, being told that there was something wrong with your unborn child is simply mortifying.  At the time we had not heard of a “diaphragmatic hernia” so we had absolutely no idea what it was, all we knew was that we were being referred to a specialist at Nottingham City Hospital to see what was to be done.  As it was a bank holiday weekend we had to wait 4 days before we would be able to find out anything about our son’s condition.  After a little research on the Internet about our unborn son’s condition we were sufficiently terrified, unable to function in any way other than to “plod” through the days in between counting each hour as they passed.

Now almost three years later we have finally been told that we can keep our son home at last.  It has to have been the hardest three years of our life, here’s a brief summary of we have been through:

• Daniel had meningitis
• Daniel had septicaemia…twice
• Daniel had pneumonia…..four times
• He’s been colonising MRSA
• Dan’s had a police investigation due to faulty equipment
• Fought NHS politics, on most levels to keep Dan in PICU

This is just a brief list but if you look through the other posts on this site you will see all of what has happened.  Throughout this time we have had some of the highest high’s and some of the lowest low’s.  What is hard to explain is the amount of pressure that this has put on Julie, myself and the kids as individuals; as a couple and as a familiy.  Since August 2003 I have worked for myself which has been great, it really has.  In October 2005 I went into a business partnership which just didn’t work out so in March 2006 I left and started my business again from scratch walking away from most of the clients that I had helped to find and coming away financially with nothing.  This in itself put pressure on me to make sure that we were provided for but being told a month later that our unborn son had major problems was a real strain to say the least.  The biggest legacy that this period of time will carry is the financial burden that it has placed upon us by not being able to work, focus on work, build the business as well.  Then there’s the cost of basically living in a hospital, eating, drinking, sleeping, travelling back and forward each day.  For almost 6 months we paid a mortgage for our cat to live in a three bedroom semi !!  It will take us a number of years before we can start to make a dent in the £13,000 of debt that we have accrued in the last 31 months.

But at the end of all of this we have our boy, at last. No matter what happens we have our son now the rest of this will just work itself out……..that’s my hope anyway.  For now here are some snaps from the last 2yrs 7 months.