Hospital Transport for Terminally Ill Children

Not long ago Rainbow Trust’s Family Support Worker, Val, had to reschedule appointments due to changes in several family circumstances.  Instead of visiting two families in their homes as was originally planned, she rearranged to provide support in the hospitals where the children were receiving treatment.  All was going well, in fact too well as both children had finished their treatment by lunchtime and were on their way home, leaving Val with the rather appealing option of going home a little earlier than usual.

Being Val though, she decided to pop in and say hello to Danny who was an inpatient in the hospital. Danny’s immune system was so low that he had spent the last year in hospital due to his susceptibility to pick up infections and viruses which were potentially life threatening. (His body had no natural way of fighting off the infections).

 For Danny it was frustrating because as soon as he was feeling better, his hopes of being discharged would be short lived as, within days, he was being readmitted with another infection, with the prospect of another six weeks in the same bed, in the same ward, feeling the same as countless times before.  Equally if not more so frustrating was the fact that he and the family were continually being told that despite all the tests in the world, no-one could actually diagnose what it was that was stopping his body from building an immune system.  So for Danny it meant that the same pattern was likely to continue for as along as ‘don’t know’ was the answer to his questions.

 To cut a long story short, Danny underwent a Bone Marrow Transplant, and six weeks on, his body seemed to be starting to build an immune system.  Every time his immune level went up by even 0.1, for Danny it was a step in the right direction - it was getting closer to the 5.0 he needed to be safe enough to leave for home. 

 Just at the very moment Val popped in to say an impromptu hello, the consultant also walked in to the ward and said that provided Danny had a safe way of travelling home [the family don’t have a car and would have had to use public transport which was not deemed safe for him] he could pack his bags.

 Danny jumped up, pointed at Val, and shouted ‘Val is my transport!’

 Within minutes Danny was pulling off monitor leads, packing his bags and telling nurses to hurry up with the medicines he needed to take home with him, whilst his mother was so thankful to Val for deciding to say hello instead of going home early.  Mother and son were driven home by Val; they knocked on the front door of their home which was opened by an unsuspecting father and sister, followed by a moment’s disbelief, then absolute delight and hugs all round because their son was, at last, home.

 Sometimes, not always, but sometimes a Family Support Worker is in just the right place, just at the right time!