Let me start from the beginning

Do you remember Covid and the pandemic when we all had to be locked together in our shared accommodation day in day out. Home schooling, working from home, being in each others constant company 24/7? 

I am so thankful for that time. That time that slowed the world down. It was a tragic time, with so many families losing loved ones, frightening and foreboding. And yet, as I look back, seeing where I am now, I am thankful that we got to spend so much time with Zack. 

We made the decision very early on to keep Zack out of school. In fact, he was on the vulnerable list so had to shield. Covid was our enemy to be feared, we had no idea what it would do to him if he caught it. How little we knew then that it would not be Covid that took him from us but another respiratory condition that would create our biggest battle.  

Let me start from the beginning.....

Throughout Zack's life he did not have very many issues with chest infections. Yes, occasionally he had a few a year but they were always dealt with at home with antibiotics, we didn't have too many admissions to hospital. Our biggest worry with Zack health wise was always his epilepsy. Everything else were just some side issues, nothing to worry about. That was until October 2020. I think that was the day everything changed.

Zack hadn't been so good over the previous couple of days. At night we use Arlo cameras to watch over him. Whenever he makes a move or a sound it pings to our mobile phone. Sadly this night, the cameras did not work and we found Zack at 5am on his back gasping for breath. He had been sick and somehow managed to wiggle over onto his back whereby he had aspirated. I was terrified. We called for an ambulance, the first time in his life we had ever needed emergency care. Fortunately the first response came quickly and then the second response. We were rushed to A and E. At this point Zack was still in a very bad way, he was having several seizures one after the other. The emergency doctors went through a number of procedures to try and get Zack's oxygen levels back under control. 

They couldn't. An anesthiatist consultant spoke to me and said we are going to have to ventilate him and transfer him to Alder Hey Children's Hospital. My world broke that day. I thought I would lose him. I pleaded to do something else, to not ventilate him. This consultant, this lovely man, (whom I would meet again at the end of Zack's journey) said it was all they had left to do to save him. And that was the day Zack was ventilated for the second time in his life. 

In recovery

We were transferred to Aldey Hey Intensive Care and Zack was stable. Zack being Zack decided that having artificial breathing was not for him and it was removed the next day and he was placed on high flow oxygen. However, dramatic as he was, he decided just before they were going to move him to HDU to drop his oxygen saturations to 70 whilst not going blue in the face nor looking like he cared. The nurse hit the button for the crash team to which many doctors came running into the room. Again for a second time I thought he was going to die that day. 

Turns out he had plugged his throat with some mucas which the physiotherapist moved via suction. Zack was so sedated by the drugs and tired with his illness that he wasn't strong enough to cough or move the secretions. What followed over the next six days was a move to HDU, many IV antibiotics, chest physio, suctioning and a weekend stint on a bipap machine. We made it to a ward for a day or two and then we were sent back home with one fixed Zack. 

Like nothing dramatic had ever happened

He had a bad chest infection and had aspirated causing a collapse in the left lung. For me I think this was the beginning of the road that would eventually take Zack from us and the start of our battle with all things respiratory.