Maddie (Donaghy) Francis
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A traumatic Christmas holiday

Writer: Maddie Maddie

Hello NICU Cheer family & friends....


Happy New Year to you all! I hope you have all had a happy and safe festive season and summer so far.


I have to apologise for my absence online and over socials the last 5 weeks. For those who don't know, many of you already do and I appreciate your love and messages of support so much, our son had a horrible medical incident overseas and our "holiday" instead became one of the worst days of my life with multiple ambulance rides and being transferred from hospital to hospital and he had paramedics, helicopter medics and firefighters all working on him and he & I ended up 4 hours drive away from my husband and daughter.


At one point we kissed him goodbye as he seemed to be getting worse by the second and although he is totally fine, little bugger bounced back within 48 hours, it has taken my Mumma heart a lot longer to recover from that moment and just the shock of all it and seeing him not breathing and going blue briefly and then being totally unresponsive for 45+ minutes. It was scarier than anything we experienced in the NICU during our stay and I never thought I would say that as our early NICU days & weeks were terrifying at times when he went backwards. His big sis is also now triggered by evacuation alarms as they set off the mountain Call To Action Siren to bring 1st responders to us so working on that with her too.


So, I put all NICU Cheer work on hiatus to have some time off to heal & work through it all.

Hospitals determined he'd had a significant seizure, his first ever and one theory is he brushed up against something toxic on a hike - a plant or fungi - and his body just shut down. We like that theory as it's a one time thing, other options are not worth worrying about as way too scary & Ash has hospital appointments starting this week to try and figure out if there's something underlying that caused it.


Cross your fingers for us please... he really has been totally fine since a few days post it all happening and we hope that continues.




 
 
 

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