20.05.2013

HSV?  But how?  

I knew that I have antibodies to HSV-1 but have never had a cold sore.  Mathew gets cold sores on occasion but not recently.  
Babies can get it from Mum if she has Genital Herpes and passes it on through birth.  But I don't have genital herpes?  I didn't give birth vaginally?  I don't have a cold sore anywhere to give him?  This didn't make sense. I had a lot of questions but it wasn't going to save Hunters life by asking them now so I accepted it and went back to concentrating on Hunter.

By about mid day with a failed liver, failing kidneys and an abnormal brain his blood pressure was now very low and his heart rate was very high.  

We were told that they still had a couple of things to try.

At 2pm we were booked in to see a Social Worker.  That's weird, we thought.  Why do we need a social worker?

Also at 2pm a doctor was coming to do an EEG on Hunters brain.  This was going to take about an hour and we couldn't be there when they did it because we were not able to touch Hunter.

"That's OK, we are seeing the Social Worker at 2 anyway", I said.

Our doctor said he would come too so he could chat to us about what they were going to do next for Hunter.      

2:15pm on May 20 2013 our doctor told us that Hunter was going to die.  He had multiple organ failure and no brain activity.

Numb.  Shocked.  Devastated.  Totally blind sided.  Cold.  

Hunter was going to die but we had the choice of turning off his Life Support.

I replied to the doctor "But he's not on Life Support, how are supposed to turn it off if he's not even on it?"

I was freezing.  I was so cold I couldn't think.  My baby was dying.  

I called my Mum who had just left with Cooper, I told her to come back because we were going to turn off Hunters Life Support.  She told the rest of the family.

I thought we had a few days before we had to do it.  Wrong again.    He was going to die today.

We arranged for him to be baptised Catholic like me.  And we gave him the name Matthew for his baptism.  Hunter Christopher Matthew Gray. 

At 16:50 on May 20 2013 our baby boy took his last breaths in my arms.  Hunter was in my arms and Mathews arms were around us both.