Louise Hughes says she will never forget the warmth and care shown to her as she was married and widowed in just a few short weeks.
The 29-year-old former nursery nurse married heart transplant patient Dave, 32, in hospital but after just a few weeks together she had to endure him passing away.
At every step of the way, organ transplant nurses made his journey as easy as possible. On the day of the wedding, they laid out tealights to create an aisle – and got a cake too – while in his final hours, they wheeled in a DVD player so the family could watch their little boy George’s favourite film, The Lion King.
Louise, 29, never forgot that warmth and care, and is set to start work as a nurse at the Royal Albert Edward Infirmary in Wigan, Greater Manchester, after retraining as a nurse. She hopes, eventually, to work with transplant patients.
Louise told the Mirror: “It was just the little things the nurses and doctors did which made it so comfortable for Dave. That always sticks in my mind. They made it a nicer experience. It wasn’t traumatic, he was comfortable, he didn’t suffer.
“After Dave passed, I took a couple of months off work and I thought, ‘Why can’t I be a nurse?’ I did a college course to get into university. In lockdown, I had to occupy George while the classes were on in the background and do my assignments when he went to bed.
“I qualified this month and it’s my ultimate goal to become involved in transplant nursing. I was a student during Covid, so I was in at the deep end. When families weren’t allowed in, I sat with a patient and held her hand. I knew she was going to pass. It took me back – it was quite a young person.”
Louise met Dave in Wigan in 2012. He told her of his condition – he was born with transposition of the great arteries, where the two main blood vessels leaving the heart are back to front. Dave even collapsed on one of their early dates and was taken to hospital by ambulance.
The following year, he was told he needed a heart transplant. For a while, good health returned and life was rosy. Dave proposed to Louise and, desperate to be parents, they began trying for a family after establishing his condition wasn’t hereditary.
George was born in 2016 and Dave was well enough to be at the birth. But by December 2017, he was seriously ill and on an urgent transplant list. In February 2018, a heart was found and he was rushed to Newcastle’s Freeman Hospital for the op – but things soon took a turn for the worse.
Louise says: “A transplant co-ordinator and one of his nurses came and I just knew when I saw their faces that something wasn’t right. When they took him off the bypass the heart was working, but he was bleeding and they gave him a drug to stop it. The donor heart had a reaction and stopped working.
“They brought him out and he was on full life support. He wasn’t breathing by himself. They said the next 24 hours were critical and didn’t think he’d make it through that.”
Dave fell into a coma and medics told Louise familiar sounds might stir him. She had a Ewan the Sheep toy which plays soothing noises to help babies fall asleep – and worked a treat with young George. Amazingly, Dave began to squeeze the toy every time Louise turned it on. After two weeks, he woke up.
Louise adds: “I just told him I loved him. They said he’d be in hospital for a year. When Dave started talking and we told him this, straight away he said, ‘Will you marry me?’ We always said if anything went wrong during the transplant, we’d get married in intensive care.”
Louise planned the nuptials in just five days. She got an emergency marriage licence and picked a dress from Debenhams in less than an hour. On March 23, 2018 she walked along the corridors of intensive care to Ed Sheeran ’s Perfect and the couple said their vows in front of just eight guests.
“It was brilliant," she said. "The sister made a reception room with food and a cake. They put tealights in the rooms and in the corridors so I could walk up it with my dad. It was lovely. It was after we left the hospital and went for a meal, then it hit me. I thought, ‘I’ve got married, but I’m not spending the wedding with my husband, because he’s in hospital’. Reality hits. It was sad.”
At first, Dave began to improve and started having physio in the hope of a second transplant, but it became clear he would never make a full recovery. Louise said: “He never really came back. It was taking a toll – he was in a lot of pain. I remember the surgeons saying they don’t think he’s going to have a second transplant as complications keep arising.
“They said because he was on life support it was up to Dave what he wanted to do – but it could come to a point where I would have to choose, if he got put into a coma. Dave said, ‘I don’t want to do this to Louise and George any longer. I am going to die. I want to do it my way, knowing I haven’t made Louise decide that’.”
Dave decided he wanted his life support to be switched off on May 8, 2018 – just three days’ away. Louise says: “Intensive care were brilliant. They got us a big double bed for his room and a TV with a DVD player, so we could watch Lion King with George in bed. Family said their goodbyes the following morning.
“Then we had some time, me, him and George. I said, ‘I think you need your painkillers now’. He said, ‘I really do’. He was crying in pain.” After receiving his medication, Dave fell into a deep sleep. His life support was turned off 90 minutes later and he died within seconds.
Dave had already planned his funeral. He was cremated in the suit he’d worn to George’s christening to the sound of the Elvis hit Can’t Help Falling in Love – the song he and Louise had planned for their first wedding dance.
George is six next month and is thrilled Louise has become a nurse. She said: “Last week, when I finished my last placement, he said, ‘You are a proper nurse, not half a nurse. I’m so proud of you finishing school’.”
Louise has also found new love and is engaged to childhood pal Alex Jukes, 27. She adds: “From the start, he said he would never let George or me forget Dave. He comes to the cemetery with us and he is really supportive.”
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