Shades of purple

Half way through one such treat my phone rang. It was our babysitter. Alex was feeling unwell and he wanted us to come home, so we cut our evening short. Small children pick up bugs all the time—especially when they start mixing at playgroups and nursery schools—so his raised temperature wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. We gave him a dose of Calpol and fully expected him to be better the next morning.

The following day, Alex’s temperature was even higher and Sue took him to our local doctors’ surgery. The doctor looked him over, took his temperature again and instructed Sue to give Alex more Calpol and to keep him hydrated.

For the next two days Alex’s temperature climbed higher and higher, while he became more and more listless and distant. On the third day it was clear that there was something seriously was wrong with him and unable to get a scheduled appointment, Sue took him to the surgery again in the hope that he’d be seen as an emergency patient.

She waited at the emergency clinic for several hours, with Alex limp in her arms. When the doctor finally saw him it was clear that Alex was beyond any help a local doctor could provide. Within minutes, my wife and son were in an ambulance, bound for the hospital. They didn’t come home again for three months.

In hospital Alex’s condition continued to deteriorate and for the next four weeks his doctors couldn’t find out why. That his immune system was fighting an infection was clear, but where that infection was hiding was a mystery.

Alex’s breathing became difficult so his doctors prescribed a course of physiotherapy, exercises that included him trying, painfully, to blow into a balloon. By now only half his normal body weight, Alex tried, but his lungs weren’t strong enough to even partially inflate the balloon. That was because his doctors hadn’t diagnosed his pneumonia.

Every day and every night for six weeks in our local hospital, Sue watched as our son slipped away from us. Finally, no nearer to finding what ailed him, they transferred Alex to a specialist childrens’ unit at a different hospital a hundred miles away from home. Even then, our local hospital hadn’t realised the seriousness of Alex’s condition, so instead of transferring him in an ambulance equipped to help a seriously ill child, they used a hospital car that got lost twice en-route.

As soon as they arrived at the new hospital, Alex was admitted and new tests discovered not only his pneumonia but also a collapsed lung. Sue signed a waiver and our precious little boy was scheduled for life saving surgery the following morning. 9th February 1996. No one knew if he’d survive the surgery that was by now his only hope and Sue and I spent that morning sitting in silence, not daring to think the unthinkable.

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If you’ve seen my photographs of Alex, you’ll know that his surgery was a success. After morphine, intensive care and six more weeks in hospital, during which Sue never left his side, twelve weeks after they walked out of our front door, they came home.

Removing his plural membrane means Alex will never go deep sea diving, but other than a fading scar that runs the full length of one shoulder blade, you’d never know that the twenty-two year old geologist who makes me proud everyday was ever so seriously ill.

Sue and I were fortunate that Alex recovered. Eric and Kat Meyer and their family are not and their beautiful daughter Rebecca was tragically taken by cancer. My heart aches at the thought of what they’ve been through and are yet still to endure. Eric’s writing about Rebecca’s illness has been as beautiful and it is heart wrenching.

Today is Little Spark’s funeral service and our industry has been showing its love and support for Eric and his family in so many ways. Of course we can always do more to support them and to help the organisations that helped Rebecca.

Please consider making a donation in Rebecca’s name to the Philadelphia Ronald McDonald House or the St. Baldrick’s Foundation.