Hannah’s Choice: A daughter's love for life. The mother who let her make the hardest decision of all.. Hannah Jones

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СКАЧАТЬ and trees rushed by in the blackness as we neared Hereford.

      ‘Nearly there, Han,’ I said in the singsong voice mothers use to calm fear, anger or anything in between.

      But Hannah did not reply and I turned to glance at her beside me. She looked as if she was sleeping. Reaching across, I grabbed her leg and shook it.

      ‘Han?’ I said. ‘Han?’

      She didn’t open her eyes. I pushed my foot down harder, trying to stave off a rush of panic. Was she breathing? Should I stop to check? No. I didn’t have time. I had to get her to hospital. They could do more for her there than I could.

      Driving into the entrance of Hereford Hospital, I headed for the children’s ward. I’d done some nursing shifts there before so I knew where it was. It was quicker than trying to find A&E. Hannah was limp in my arms as I pulled her out of the car. Quick, quick. Hurry. Let me in.

      I hit the doorbell to the unit but nothing happened and I stared around me, ready to start screaming. But suddenly the door opened and I dashed inside. Running along the corridor, I could feel Hannah lying in my arms. My baby. My precious girl.

      Flying towards the children’s ward, I hit the bell on another door and waited for a voice to crackle out of the intercom. It seemed like for ever until it opened and I ran into a long corridor.

      ‘I need help,’ I pleaded as I reached the nursing station. ‘Please. My daughter is unconscious.’

      Nurses burst into life in front of me and Hannah was taken out of my arms. I followed as she was carried into a room. Very pale, her breathing was fast and shallow as a doctor started examining her. Please, please let her be OK. Make her well again.

      ‘We’ll need to put a line up,’ the doctor said as the nurses peeled off the top of Hannah’s cream all-in-one sleep suit.

      I stared in horror at her tiny body. It was covered in tiny red marks – more appearing with each second – livid spots popping under her skin as if an invisible person was pricking her. The doctor pressed a needle into her right arm to take some blood.

      ‘We’ll send this straight off to the lab,’ he said as he slipped the syringe into a plastic bag.

      Hannah was still semi-conscious as she was put onto a saline drip. Now all we could do was wait for the blood test results. Time disappeared as I sat by her bed waiting. She looked so tiny – her blonde hair clinging to her head and her breathing still shallow and rapid. Her skin was so pale, it looked almost grey. I wanted to do something. Surely I could? I was her mother, the one person who would always protect her. But even as I tried telling myself this was some everyday, run-of-the-mill illness, I felt the spark of fear which lies inside every mother from the day their first child is born uncurl itself inside me.

      ‘Mrs Jones?’ a voice said. ‘The doctor wants to speak to you.’

      I was taken into a room where the doctor was waiting with a nurse. She walked towards me as if to put her arm around my shoulders but stopped as I stared at her. I knew what this meant. I’d seen it a lot during twelve years of nursing. But I’d always been on the other side before – one of the people waiting to gently break bad news to a stunned relative.

      I sat down opposite the doctor.

      ‘We’ve had the results back,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid Hannah is very poorly. Do you have any idea what is wrong with her?’

      I looked at him. I’d been going over it in my mind and knew – the bruising, tiredness, loss of appetite. I should have realised before now.

      ‘I think so,’ I replied.

      The doctor looked at me.

      ‘Hannah has tummy ache because she’s bleeding into her stomach and is now beginning to bleed everywhere. We need to work quickly to save her life now.’

      I stayed silent as I listened.

      ‘This is very serious, Mrs Jones,’ the doctor continued softly. ‘Hannah is a very sick little girl. We think she has leukaemia.’

      It was quiet on the ward, past midnight, as I opened my eyes and looked at Hannah. A small light above her bed threw soft beams and shadows across it. Standing up, I tucked her yellow knitted blanket around her. We’d brought it from home – something familiar in all that was so new.

      Turning around, I stared at the plastic chair which I’d earlier folded out flat before wrapping a hospital sheet and blanket around it. This was my bed now, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to switch off as I lay down and heard the hushed sounds of the hospital at night – the clip of nurses’ footsteps, the rumble of trolley wheels and the soft beeps made by machines. I felt as I had in the first few weeks after becoming a mother – too scared to fall properly asleep as I listened to Hannah breathing. Like all new mothers, mine had been a waking sleep all those years ago until I’d learned to trust the fact that she was safe. Now such certainty was gone.

      Hours after arriving at Hereford, we’d been transferred to Birmingham Children’s Hospital and already the map of our world was unrecognisable. Gone were pre-school and nursery pick-ups, bath times and stories before bed. Instead there were lumbar punctures and central lines, HB levels and platelets.

      We’d been plunged into our new world during our first meeting with Hannah’s oncology consultant, Dr Williams. Young, smiling and comfortably rounded, he’d told us that she had probable acute myeloid leukaemia – an aggressive and rarer form of the blood cancer. From that moment on there was a flurry of activity, questions and tests. This morning Hannah had gone down to the operating rooms to be anaesthetised for a lumbar puncture to confirm the diagnosis and identify the specific type of leukaemia by drawing spinal fluid to test for cancer cells. A central line had also been inserted – an intravenous catheter which snaked through her chest wall and into her jugular vein ready to deliver chemotherapy drugs straight to her heart.

      Andrew and I had sat quietly as Mr Williams explained AML to us. In healthy adults and children, bone marrow produces red blood cells to carry oxygen around the body, white blood cells to fight infection and platelets to knit blood together and control bleeding. But in Hannah this system had gone out of control, like a rollercoaster crashing off its tracks into the unknown. Deep within the core of her bones, her marrow was over-producing imperfect cells. It meant that healthy blood was not being made which was why Hannah had started bleeding internally. Without treatment she would certainly die. With it, she stood a chance.

      For a moment fear had engulfed me as the doctor talked – a bitter, clenching terror that filled my gut. But I’d pushed it down as I listened to every word he said, knowing I must keep myself calm as we prepared to fight for Hannah’s life. Working for many years at the extreme end of nursing – intensive care and cardiac transplant wards, major injuries units and paediatric ICU transfer – had taught me how to do this. In the rush and panic of acute medicine I’d learned to keep still in the eye of a storm. Sick and infirm, young and fit, death was a random enemy which didn’t make allowances as it took lives. But it was only now as it tried to take my own child that I knew what fear really tasted like.

      It had all felt unreal during those first anxious hours in Hereford Hospital as we waited to be transferred to Birmingham by blue-light ambulance. After the doctor had spoken to me, I’d phoned Andrew and he’d arrived desperate for news, tears wet on his cheeks as both of us tried to take in what was happening. Until then we’d had an ordinary life: Andrew working as an auditor and СКАЧАТЬ