On the 1st December 2016 our lives got flipped upside down, our world crumbled around us.

Our 17 month old little boy Oscar James Ash was your average healthy 17month old he was showing no signs of being ill, walking up the garden path with him he was babbling away talking to me and his dad then he went quiet this is not like our boy we go to get him out of his pram and his eyes are rolled back, no breath there, his body was lifeless, limp and floppy, I got him out of the buggy as quick as i could and rushed him upstairs to my mum as i got up the stairs he started breathing but began to have a convultions i called the ambulance straight away 7.40pm i will never forget that time. 

The first responder came and immediately put him on oxygen and gave him 5mg of Diazipan. This failed to work the ambulance crew then turned up and we knew it was serious as they scooped him up and ran didnt ask 1 question straight in the ambulance and off to hospital i cannot remove the noise of those sirens from my head. We entered a room a good 15- 20 people awaited us as we stood back and watched the team fight tirelessly to try bring him out of the siezure they then began to breathe for him using the bag, this was the point where we thought our beautiful boy was gone. An hour later still having a siezure no signs of stopping still breathing for him on the bag, we have no idea whats happening to our little boy just questions of if he is allergic to anything was it a normal birth etc etc. 3 hours past the team were very frantically administering medications and told us if it didnt stop he would end up on intensive care. Suddenly there was a sigh of relief he stopped! However, they were still bag breathing for him and just 10 minutes later it began again another siezure this time 45 minutes long it would probably have carried on but this is the point where they said if we do not get this baby sedated there is nothing else we can do. 

Once the sedation had kicked in they were able to get tube down his throat for the life support machine. He was taken straight off for a CT scan and we were told to meet them in the Intensive care unit (ICU) now our local hospital the James Paget only has an adults ICU so they had to adjust to Oscar and his need while we waited for the Childrens Acute Transport Service  (CATS) to contact and say they were on their way to take us to either Addenbrooks hospital or Great Ormands Street hospital depending on which one had a bed.

The next 24 hours past a night of alarms, a night of noises from the venilator that was keeping our boy alive. No sleep just staring at a lifeless body wishing we could take his place wishing it wasnt him in that bed. We finally recieved a call from Addenbrooks to confirm they had a bed then the CATS team to tell us they were on the way they got with us around half 9, his dad stayed with him to travel in the ambulance it was going to take the CATS team 2 hour's to transfer all his machines over to their portable ones and make him stable and i began the drive to Cambridgeshire because i was so tired i wanted to allow more time to get there as i had no sleep since i woke 7am thursday morning. I arrived at Addenbrooks hospital at 11.50pm ran to paediatric intensive care unit  (PICU) and was put in family room. 10 minutes later Oscar and his dad arrived with the CATS team again we were put in the family room while they done their transfer to PICU it felt like a life time before we were allowed to see him. 

He spent 6 days on life support and in that time numerous tests were done and revealed that he had pneumonia, entrovirus, swelling to numerous areas of the body. They tried to take him off of life support on the 3rd day but he couldnt cope his air ways closed and the arrest button was pressed within seconds 10-15 people were there running through the doors with their equipment to again save our child's life. They eventually got him back onto life support and he was left on it until the 6th day when they were successful in taking him off. 

We were then transfered to the High Dependency Unit (HDU) again he was lifeless it wasnt our same little boy laying there it took him a long time to recover from the amount of sedation he was given because they had to give him more for his weight as his body kept on fighting it off. 

Eventually our boy started to move, we got our first smile, our first giggles, my heart broke all over again this time for a good reason. In the next few days oscar continued having siezures but this time they were not to the extent of his first.

The team were happy with the progress he was making and transferred us back to the James Paget on the 11th December 2016 unfortunately we didnt recieve great care from the team here and after lots of complaints we were finally trained on how to administer buccal midazolam incase he has another siezure and it last more than 5 minutes. They have failed to come to agreements on starting Oscar on Keppra daily to prevent siezures and we are now waiting follow up apportionments with various nuerology consultants and sleep EEG scans Oscar is not out of the woods yet. He still isnt quite our boy, he is struggling to walk and his legs seem very weak but he is a fighter and he hasn't given up! He is stronger than anyone I know.

Now the whole time being at addenbrooks we were put up in Acorn house 'a home from home' these guys are all charity funded and their charity name is The Sick Children's Trust, this house alone costs 95,000 a year to run, without them we wouldnt have been able to stay at our boys bedside, we would have had worries about accomodation costs, the people at acorn house were so supportive and always there to listen always ssking on updates for Oscar, we want to give back to them so they can continue to provide the support that they do to other families in need and to say thankyou for everything. 

Georgia, Kyle and Oscar ❤