Nothing could prepare Valentina Daprile for losing her son, Angelo Ray, when he was eight days old. But she and her husband Luigi were determined to donate his organs so that another baby could live. It was something the hospital had never considered before.
Valentina will always remember the kindness in the doctor’s voice and the careful way he delivered the worst news a parent could ever hear.
“I’m so sorry, but there’s nothing we can do for your baby.”
The staff at the newborn intensive care unit (Nicu) at King’s College Hospital had done everything they could but Angelo Ray would never be able to survive without life support and an MRI scan showed no brain activity.
Thinking back to that day in July 2016, she says it felt as though her whole world was collapsing.
Angelo Ray was just down the corridor resting in his incubator. His mother Valentina wondered how she would go on without him. She hadn’t even been able to hold him yet.
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