Mr Wassel was diagnosed with myocarditis and pericarditis (massive inflammation of the heart muscle) among other things, which led to his heart failing, along with his lungs and kidneys. He spent the next two weeks in an induced coma and on a number of different life support machines.
As the hospital didn’t know the cause they basically fired every type of drug that they thought might help into his system and thankfully something clicked as he turned a corner and started to improve.
Once he woke up, he had another two weeks in ICU and then another 2 1/2 weeks on a ward recovering, before being discharged to start the long road to full health at home.
After spending the Autumn Term at home and the Spring Term 'easing himself' back in, he is now thankfully well on the way to his old self.
Harefield Hospital are currently looking for support to update their dialysis machines as part of their Haemodyalisis Appeal. Currently, the dialysis process takes 12 hours and has to run overnight. For Mr Wassell, this was one of the most terrifying parts of being in Intensive Care.
"Dialysis was one of the two really negative memories that I have of ITU. You are hooked up to a machine where you can see your blood leave your body, whirr around a machine and then reenter you. As it takes place at night, all of the lights are off apart from the life support machines giving your room the ambience of the Death Star and added to that, you have a nurse or two in the room with you at all times, reinforcing the fact that this is something really, really serious. Considering that I was having dialysis every other night for over a week, this was pretty emotionally and physically exhausting.
The new machines do the same job in 4 hours and this would change the experience profoundly, decreasing stress on the patient and the nursing staff and allowing the patient to get more sleep overnight, decreasing their recovery timeline.
Our target of £12,000 would provide Harefield Hospital with one of these new machines for their Intensive Therapy Unit. Any funds that are raised above this target will go to a linked charity called 'The Heart of West London Partnership' which raises money to support research into cardiac health.
Links to each of the charity projects can be found here:
Harefield Hospital Haemodialysis Appeal: https://www.rbhcharity.org/Appeal/harefield-haemodialysis-appeal 
Heart of West London Partnership: https://www.rbhcharity.org/Appeal/heart-of-west-london 

William Kennedy