Hazel knew Sue from the ante-natal classes where they had met and chatted about the coming birth of their babies; they had both given birth to twins.
Sue tried to tell Hazel not to worry. She told them that the doctors were very good at Nottingham and she was sure Patrick would recover.
It was 9pm before Hazel and Robert were taken to see Patrick. All they wanted to know was whether he would live or die.
Hazel recalls: ‘I was crying, and saying, would he be all right? They were saying they didn’t know.’ She said specialist Dr Nelson Porter couldn’t tell her what was wrong with him.
Hazel’s last sight of her baby before he left for the Queen’s Medical Centre would live in her memory forever. She had asked if she could seehim, but one of the nurses replied: ‘Are you sure you want to …?’
Hazel thought she would be able to pick up Patrick and cuddle him. Instead she recalls: ‘When I looked through the door I was stunned. He had no clothes on, just a little white cap on his head.
‘There was a doctor holding a tube down his throat to help him breathe, and Patrick was fighting it. I looked at his little face but he had no colour at all. He was as white as a sheet.
‘I couldn’t believe it. When I had left him he had been playing, laughing and cooing. It wasn’t the same child in there. I just looked at him and said: “Oh my God – look at his colour.” The Sister dropped a blanket over him. Robert and I were just hanging on to each other.’
There was so much equipment in the ambulance carrying Patrick to Nottingham that there wasn’t room for Hazel and Robert.
When they arrived at the intensive care unit, a nurse quietly asked them if they wanted a priest to be called to baptise their son. If he was to die, then the Elstones felt he should be christened before it was too late. At 1 am the priest arrived and, when he realised that Patrick was a twin, and his brother was there, he decided to baptise both of them in the middle of the night. A nurse they didn’t know stood in as a godparent, though Hazel and Robert were in such a daze they never even asked her name. Patrick lay there surrounded by tubes, wires and monitors, limp, barely alive, with his eyes closed.
Staff advised the Elstones to get some sleep but, try as she might, Hazel couldn’t rest.
At 7am a nurse delivered good news. Patrick seemed a little better and was making progress. For two days he continued to get better.
Then, just as the doctors were beginning to talk of transferring him back to Grantham, Patrick suffered his first fit. Robert was holding his hand when he began to twitch and shake. ‘Robert asked the doctor what was happening. The doctor told us it was a fit and, after that, he started having fits every time he opened his eyes. They’d last about a minute each time.’
It’s a strange medical phenomenon that twins often share the same ailments, even feeling the same pain, and after Patrick had fought for his little life, twin brother Anthony also fell ill. Anthony, too, was admitted to Queen’s. The doctors diagnosed diarrhoea, but said it could be trauma triggered by being parted from his identical brother.
Hazel remembers: ‘Anthony was screaming a lot and they thought it was because Patrick was ill. He was missing him so much he was playing up.’
Eventually, both children were discharged and, once he was home, Patrick’s fits stopped altogether. Hazel often wondered what had happened to cause her son to stop breathing on Ward Four. Later, she would take Patrick back to Grantham and Kesteven Hospital for a check-up and find out more about the night her baby almost died. She would discover that his heart had stopped beating not once, but twice, in the space of four hours. Buteven then nobody could tell Hazel Elstone why it had happened.
At the Queen’s Medical Centre in Nottingham questions were being asked about the high number of seriously ill children who were being transferred from Ward Four at
Sue tried to tell Hazel not to worry. She told them that the doctors were very good at Nottingham and she was sure Patrick would recover.
It was 9pm before Hazel and Robert were taken to see Patrick. All they wanted to know was whether he would live or die.
Hazel recalls: ‘I was crying, and saying, would he be all right? They were saying they didn’t know.’ She said specialist Dr Nelson Porter couldn’t tell her what was wrong with him.
Hazel’s last sight of her baby before he left for the Queen’s Medical Centre would live in her memory forever. She had asked if she could seehim, but one of the nurses replied: ‘Are you sure you want to …?’
Hazel thought she would be able to pick up Patrick and cuddle him. Instead she recalls: ‘When I looked through the door I was stunned. He had no clothes on, just a little white cap on his head.
‘There was a doctor holding a tube down his throat to help him breathe, and Patrick was fighting it. I looked at his little face but he had no colour at all. He was as white as a sheet.
‘I couldn’t believe it. When I had left him he had been playing, laughing and cooing. It wasn’t the same child in there. I just looked at him and said: “Oh my God – look at his colour.” The Sister dropped a blanket over him. Robert and I were just hanging on to each other.’
There was so much equipment in the ambulance carrying Patrick to Nottingham that there wasn’t room for Hazel and Robert.
When they arrived at the intensive care unit, a nurse quietly asked them if they wanted a priest to be called to baptise their son. If he was to die, then the Elstones felt he should be christened before it was too late. At 1 am the priest arrived and, when he realised that Patrick was a twin, and his brother was there, he decided to baptise both of them in the middle of the night. A nurse they didn’t know stood in as a godparent, though Hazel and Robert were in such a daze they never even asked her name. Patrick lay there surrounded by tubes, wires and monitors, limp, barely alive, with his eyes closed.
Staff advised the Elstones to get some sleep but, try as she might, Hazel couldn’t rest.
At 7am a nurse delivered good news. Patrick seemed a little better and was making progress. For two days he continued to get better.
Then, just as the doctors were beginning to talk of transferring him back to Grantham, Patrick suffered his first fit. Robert was holding his hand when he began to twitch and shake. ‘Robert asked the doctor what was happening. The doctor told us it was a fit and, after that, he started having fits every time he opened his eyes. They’d last about a minute each time.’
It’s a strange medical phenomenon that twins often share the same ailments, even feeling the same pain, and after Patrick had fought for his little life, twin brother Anthony also fell ill. Anthony, too, was admitted to Queen’s. The doctors diagnosed diarrhoea, but said it could be trauma triggered by being parted from his identical brother.
Hazel remembers: ‘Anthony was screaming a lot and they thought it was because Patrick was ill. He was missing him so much he was playing up.’
Eventually, both children were discharged and, once he was home, Patrick’s fits stopped altogether. Hazel often wondered what had happened to cause her son to stop breathing on Ward Four. Later, she would take Patrick back to Grantham and Kesteven Hospital for a check-up and find out more about the night her baby almost died. She would discover that his heart had stopped beating not once, but twice, in the space of four hours. Buteven then nobody could tell Hazel Elstone why it had happened.
At the Queen’s Medical Centre in Nottingham questions were being asked about the high number of seriously ill children who were being transferred from Ward Four at
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