Loving and Losing You, Azaylia by Safiyya Vorajee

Author:Safiyya Vorajee [Vorajee, Safiyya]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781529193220
Publisher: Ebury Publishing
Published: 2022-04-14T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

‘Let’s go, champ! Come on, champ!’

Azaylia was finally starting the transplant process and I was allowed to sit with her for part of the treatment. Transfusing the donated blood into her body would only take about ten to fifteen minutes because of her size and the small amount of blood she was receiving. Ashley and me had agreed to share the time at her side, so everything was divided up 50:50, as always.

Azaylia had lost all her hair now and had no eyebrows or eyelashes, but she looked so serene and courageous as she lay in a hospital bed, her eyes wide open. She was even trying to smile. It blew my mind.

‘Go on, Azaylia!’ I said. ‘You’re doing so well! Look at you!’

This felt like the biggest day of our lives. We’d been wishing and hoping and praying for this moment for so long and it had been such a rocky road to get this far. Despite the fact we were told they’d found a potential donor for Azaylia back in December 2020, there were lots of tests to be done and so many things that could have gone wrong, right up until this moment.

When we went public with an update on Azaylia’s transplant, we wanted to give positive news to our followers and to all the people who’d signed up to the donor registers. That meant waiting until the last minute when we knew for certain the transplant was going ahead. Now we’d finally put the news on social media and it was so uplifting: we had the green light and there was no going back.

The specialists could not have prepared us better for what to expect. We’d been warned that the room where the transfusion took place would smell of sweetcorn because of the preservative in the bone marrow and the smell would come out of Azaylia’s skin afterwards too. Every detail had been passed on to us and I felt empowered by all the education and information I soaked up. I was so grateful, because knowledge helped me feel more in control of myself, and the situation.

I briefly filmed Azaylia having the transfusion, not just as a personal record of her journey, but also because I wanted to share it on Instagram. The support and love we got from our followers meant so much and this was a way of not just keeping them updated, but giving something back. If I’d been able to see a video like this when I found out Azaylia needed a transplant, it would have been a massive help. As it was, I’d gone through such a steep learning curve and now I had so much to share.

By now I had close to a million followers, and Ashley had over a million. My videos could potentially help other people, I thought, so why not spend a few minutes of my day doing them? If it helped one person, that would be amazing.

Blogging had become a welcome distraction for me too and it was also a kind of therapy.

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