Emma’s Journey - Page 4
The next few hours and then days were horrible but she pulled through and all of us started to believe that she might have beaten the odds yet again.
From then on Emma’s journey was far less stable. She would have 36 hours of doing really well and then her blood pressure would suddenly plummet and she would be really sick again. Over the next two weeks she slowly deteriorated in front of us and it gradually became clear that nothing the doctors did made any real difference. They kept trying desperately to save her and each time they tried something new she would develop a complication from the treatment. Each complication left her a little weaker and us a little more hopeless.
Finally on 1 July our consultant took us on one side and said that the time had come to stop. All the team felt that we were now doing more harm than good. Emma needed more and more morphine just to keep her comfortable and, despite all the treatment, her blood pressure was dropping by the hour.
At
midday they carefully placed her on our laps for a final cuddle. Then
they disconnected the breathing tube and left the three of us alone. She
looked at us peacefully as she slowly slipped away leaving a hole in our
lives that nothing will ever fill.
Jane Braddy