Good Friday, 2016, signified the worst circumstances imaginable for the Askin family in the UK.
The then-two-year-old son of Mike and Kerry Askin had been diagnosed with the extremely rare, horribly unlucky, lung disease called pulmonary Langerhans cell histiocytosis, in which cysts cover the lungs.
Little Dylan had been in and out of intensive care since Christmas, 2015, and a recent case of pneumonia had rendered his lungs near useless.
Doctors at Queens Medical Hospital in Nottingham had reached the limits of what medicine could do, and Dylan’s parents were advised it was time to turn off the two-year-old’s life support.
“On Good Friday they told us things were looking bleak and that we weren’t going to get him back,” Kerry told Derby Telegraph.
“All the settings on all the machines were at their highest and he was still struggling. We had him christened, all his family came from all over to say goodbye, including his big brother.”
LISTEN: What the mother of a very sick child wants you to know. Post continues after audio.
Neither Kerry or Mike had slept for days.
“I was crying all the time,” Kerry said. The hospital made arrangements for the family to be with their dying little boy around the clock.
“All the while we were singing to him and talking to him and saying goodbye,” Kerry said.
But Dylan wasn’t going anywhere.
As doctors began the process of turning his life support off – withdrawing his medication and starting the sedation process – the toddler’s heart rate unexpectedly dropped to normal.
“We just said stop, there is still fight in him. Then his oxygen levels started to pick up, and he started coming back to us,” Kerry told Derby Telegraph.