Gavin: Down, then up. (BMT Day zero)

The last 24 hours have been tough. Sonny's infection has worsened and at midnight the decision was taken to move him downstairs to intensive care. Essentially, the infection is making his blood vessels leak fluid into the surrounding tissue which means his blood pressure is dropping to to the levels of a newborn baby. Although hard to repeat, it was made quite clear that without intervention, Sonny would go into cardiac arrest.
As Sonny is in isolation, he entered a similar room on ICU which was basically banks of monitors, pumps and syringe drivers. All these were driven by a specialist nurse from a computer in the corner and from the moment he entered, the activity was relentless. Canulas were put in his hand to give them the maximum amount of lines to use and an infusion of adrenalin was started to get everything stable. His usual drugs and new ones essential for the transplant today couldn't be forgotten and watching this nurse at work was quite incredible.
Of course, he had a terrible night. ICU is not there for comfort, it's there to save lives so the lights stayed on and the nurse slammed around to ensure he continued to get a reaction from Sonny. This morning Sonny's blood pressure did stabilise and the ICU consultants were happy enough with his progress to let him back onto Fox ward so he could have his transplant. Despite taking something of a backseat (considering we've spent the last two months building up to this) the transplant went fine. The blood consultant told us that it was a really good sample with a huge number of cells which is all we could ask for. Thanks again Yeehaa (Sonny's new name for his donor).
Tonight Sonny is hot, bothered, exhausted and feels terrible. The infection is not going away but he's now managing his blood pressure himself. ICU are monitoring him hourly and will take him back down if his pressure drops below 95. As it went to around 60-70 last night we're reassured he's in the best possible hands.

ICU: The only machine not used was the one with the plastic on it.




BMT: See that little bag of blood in the top left? That literally holds life in it.