Day 20 - a different cot.

The same blog - a different cot.

After everything that happened yesterday and Belfast's input, we were told last night that Evan's return to Belfast is scheduled for 10:25 Friday morning, (today) as the pocket of air continues to decrease, but the condition for a return flight  is very clear that it must be a low altitude flight - which will be weather dependent.

So not wanting to preempt anything I didn't mention it until now - now that I am sitting beside Evan's cot in the Royal Victoria Hospital Belfast's Clarke Clinic.

So how do you go from going to theatre at 1 o'clock on a Friday afternoon to instead being 4,800 feet over the Irish Sea.

The answer - involvement from Belfast - central line replacement not needed - consultants review x-rays and transport team sorted - of course weather dependent!

We left Ronald McDonald shortly after 7 this morning and walked out into the fog, so a quick check of the weather on the Internet for both Belfast & Birmingham shows fog lifting at 9 with light showers.

On the ward there is a flourish of paper work and hand over documents, and as soon as Evan is strapped in and ready to go, the fire alarm goes off and procedure dictated the ward goes into shutdown until the all clear is given so 20mins later and we get out the doors, 100yrds down the corridor about to get in the lift and the fire alarm goes again, and we are ushered into theatre to leave the corridors clear, and about 40mins later we are on the move, but when leaving the hospital it's obvious something else is going on traffic at a standstill, large police presence and a couple of ambulances go past with sirens on, but we are going the other way.

We left Birmingham hospital not with the emotional goodbyes that we had when leaving Belfast but with a huge sigh of relief, in the knowledge that we would soon be home, and we would soon see Freya.

I have no idea of times on the return, just that we got here safely.

Within minutes of getting into place in Clarke Clinic a number of friendly and familiar faces from Barbour Ward appear to something akin to a family reunion or Evan's fan club I'm not quite sure, but all very welcome.

It is very reassuring to be back in Northern Ireland and Clarke Clinic.