BED 10 KIDNEY DIALYSIS MACHINE

My son (Calvin) was born with complex medical needs such as, congenital heart disease, chronic lung disease as well as bowel and kidney malformation just to cite a few. We owe much of Calvin’s success to various hospitals however for the purpose of this fundraiser we shall be concentrating on the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel, London. Calvin spent a good solid year at the Royal London after birth, where he remained in the high dependency unit being treated for his pulmonary hypertension and chronic lung disease rendering him dependent on a CPAP machine. I am forever grateful to the doctors and nurses who worked tirelessly to save my son through those good and bleak days. Thankfully my son got through this initial hurdle and though still suffering with some major life threatening illnesses he has managed to live his life to the best of his ability, defying all odds. The Royal London Hospital has remained an integral part of Calvin's life, under 6 departments including the Paediatric, respiratory and neurology team.

This relationship couldn't have been any more useful than when Calvin became gravely unwell in 2016, taking him a whole year to recover. Following Calvin’s open heart surgery in 2015 his health started to deteriorate and by 2016 he was in intensive care at the Royal London hospital, being treated for pneumonia. Due to Calvin's vulnerability in terms of his health, he went into organ failure, and his kidney took the worst hit. Prior to this Calvin already has complications with his kidneys, with both merged into one (in the shape of a horse shoe), and with one end covered in a cyst rendering that end useless. So effectively my son had one kidney to work with to begin with. When this started to fail, Calvin started to retain fluid and his salt levels started to fall out of balance, and the only way to save him was to go on a dialysis machine. However the Royal London hospital where Calvin was did not have said machine, so he had to be transferred to Great Ormond Street hospital. Transferring a critically ill patient needing a kidney dialysis was very traumatic and extremely difficult. Every second counted and I can remember the doctors literally watching the clock, as they had a set time in which to get him to the hospital before things turned even more left; they had minutes. To give a sense of the desperation at the time, the ambulance driver had to hoot his horn like a mad man to make room on the road to make our journey faster, as the cab driver in front of us would not move at the traffic lights. The machine Calvin was transported on which essentially was his life source, was battery operated! Thankfully we arrived at Great Ormond where Calvin was put on a dialysis machine for roughly a week, though he was in intensive care for a month.

Despite all this, Calvin made a miraculous recovery however slow, and is now at home and back in school, we thank God. Now having time to reflect on what went down, the outcome could have been far worse and had it not been down to the quick thinking and improvisation of the doctors, I can't say with certainty my son would be here. However, think of how easier and quicker this whole process could have been had the dialysis machine been at the Royal London. My son's life was put at tremendous risk during his transportation, and I cannot bear the thought of someone else going through this. People might say 'patients are always transferred in a critical state between hospitals’, but in the case of my son and many in his condition I feel this could have been avoided. What if there wasn't a bed for Calvin to occupy at Great Ormond Street Hospital, what if the traffic on the roads was unmanageable and what if the battery on the machine died?

I would like to call upon the public from the perspective of a mother who had to go through this, to help the Royal London Hospital raise the funds for this life saving machine. Be it biased, I can't think of a more deserving hospital for this gift. They have given hope to me and many who have used them and the staff working relentlessly around the clock to save lives deserve to be recognised. You never know, someone you know (though I pray you might never experience this) may one day be in need of a dialysis machine.

Please give as generously as you can to this deserving cause, and may God bless you all.Thank you

(P.S In case you're wondering about the name , Calvin's bay in intensive care was always bed 10)