I suspect there will be a lot of stories of this nature...
Some of you may remember the first part of the story, if not, here it is: www.b3ta.com/questions/soundtrack/post625458

So, there we are, with our new son. Me sitting, Mrs Mork lying, in the recovery room at the hospital. The midwife suggests that the baby might want to have some milk and, after a rather unsuccessful attempt at breast feeding, I offer him the bottle and he sucks on it like his life depends on it (which I suppose it did, really).

The midwife then noticed that our son was going “dusky” and, on the advice of the Paediatrician, he was admitted to Special Care, where it turned out that his blood was not getting enough oxygen for some reason. The Registrar said that, as he was a caesarean birth, his lungs probably had some mucus in them and this should clear up soon.
So Mrs M was transferred up to the maternity ward where we chatted and looked at the Bounty pack and waited for the in-laws to turn up.

At about 10:30 the Consultant from special care turned up to see us.

“What have you been told about what’s happening to your baby?”

We explained the whole mucus/lung thing that we had been told. The doctor then explained that they had, by chance, been visited by a specialist from the Royal Brompton Hospital (Heart & Lung Hospital in London) who had checked our son and it appeared that his heart had developed incorrectly. Instead of sending blood to the lungs to get oxygen, some of it was going back round the body, hence the low oxygen levels.

This would require an operation, assuming the deformity was above the diaphragm.

And if it’s below the diaphragm?

Well…let’s worry about that when it happens.

I can’t remember a lot about the next few hours: I remember my in-laws turning up shortly afterwards and having to compose myself to give them the news, I remember organising an emergency baptism, I remember weeping my eyes out in the hospital garden. Eventually, the ambulance arrived to take me and our son to the Brompton. (Mrs M, having had an operation was pretty much immobile so had to stay behind.)

We were rushed into the intensive care unit and I was taken aside to have everything explained to me: what was happening, what the problem was, what was going to happen etc. Then several doctors turned up to carry out scans on my son’s heart. At this point I started hearing people saying “normal”, over and over. The Consultant explained that my son’s heart problem was not what was originally thought. He still had a problem, but he wouldn’t need an operation. The particular problem he had would be expected to resolve itself quite quickly given a bit of TLC.

I remember being told “this is good news.”

So, in the end, the boy ended up spending a week in intensive care in Brompton, followed by two weeks in special care back home. The Brompton put us (me and Mrs M) up in one of the parents’ rooms in the hospital and even managed to find us an en suite.

Those three weeks have so many memories and stories which might come out in the future. I cannot thank the doctors and nurses involved enough. They didn’t just take care of our baby, but they took care of us as well. I could fill pages with all the kind and thoughtful things they did for us which were above and beyond their “day job”.

I’ll echo the comments of many other posters in praising the NHS. When you need it, when you really need it, it’s wonderful.

Length? felt like an eternity.
(Mork, Thu 11 Mar 2010, 14:22, 1 reply)

Glad it all turned out ok in the end.
My finacee and I both work within the NHS and were commenting the other night about how you never hear any positive news reports on the NHS, only the stories of missed targets, incompetent staff, and extending waiting lists.

The reality is, the majority of the staff within the NHS are hardworking, highly skilled, caring individuals, that take great pride in their job and the care they provide. The majority of staff go above and beyond what their contracts require of them and on the most part professional to a fault.

Unfortunately, when you work for an organisation who's management infrastructure is under constant change, and is a major pawn in every political game played, it is very hard to create a stable and consistent level of care from once PCT/Trust/County to the next.
( Evil Bastardo, Fri 12 Mar 2010, 15:00, closed)