‘MUMMY, I'M GOING TO DIE TONIGT'

I’d told my boy again and again to take his condition seriously. If only he’d listened...

Donna Green, 43, Armagh

As the midwife passed me my second-born son, I beamed with pride.

‘He’s a bruiser,’ I grinned, cradling Tiernan in my arms.

Tiernan weighed 9lb 10oz, as sturdy as they come, with soft blonde hair.

Just like my husband Stephen, 23.

We took him home and introduced Tiernan to his big brother Stefan, 3. I felt so lucky. Not long after he turned 2, I noticed Tiernan was scratching behind his knees and elbows.

He caught a lot of coughs and colds, too.

Our boy was diagnosed with eczema and asthma.

The doctor gave Tiernan a blue asthma inhaler with a plastic chamber attachment to help him take it.

Worrying.

But he was such a placid tot, he’d sit on my lap calmly breathing it in whenever he needed it.

Confident and happy, Tiernan would play with Stefan and their younger sister Mise’eire, who arrived when Tiernan was 6.

He grew out of his eczema by the age of 7, but we continued using the inhaler.

The asthma never stopped him doing anything – certainly not growing!

Before I knew it, my little blondie was a handsome 6ft 4in-tall teenager.

‘Can I borrow your hair straighteners?’ he’d ask, using them to style his floppy fringe.

I always felt so proud walking

around the shopping centre with him.

Even when he had his first girlfriend, he still made time for his family, especially his younger brother Ryan, who arrived in 2009.

Still a typical teenager, though, he was always out about with mates.

But at 18, he came home panting one night.

‘Mum, I don’t feel well,’ he said, wheezing.

Worried, I took him straight to Craigavon Area Hospital.

‘He’s having an asthma attack,’ the doctor explained. His first. ‘You need to start taking your brown inhaler,’ he told Tiernan sternly.

He’d been given the brown inhaler to administer steroids as a preventative measure.

I’d lost count of the number of times I’d seen the prescription boxes unopened.

I’d nagged him endlessly about it – but, headstrong and independent, there’d been no convincing Tiernan.

Now, though, I hoped he would listen.

Discharged from hospital after a couple of days, he went back to college, and then got a job in retail.

Two years later, on Christmas Day 2016, Tiernan was under the weather with a cough and cold.

With no appetite, he didn’t touch his turkey dinner.

But just before New Year, he went t t to B Belfast lf tf for the day with mates.

At 2am the following morning, the phone rang.

It was Tiernan – he was back home but locked out.

I groaned and got out of bed, shattered.

‘Stop coming home so late, son,’ I muttered.

‘All right, Ma, I know,’ he laughed, going to his bedroom.

I went back to bed and next thing I knew, it was 3.30am and Tiernan was looming over me.

Gasping for breath and puffing desperately on his blue inhaler.

Stephen raced to his side and I dashed for his brown inhaler.

I saw that his lips and ears were blue and the veins on his forehead were bulging.

At that moment, Tiernan looked at himself in the mirror.

‘Mummy, I think I’m going to die tonight,’ he wheezed. ‘No,’ I shouted, dialling 999. Stefan and Mise’eire woke up to us shouting, I asked them to go and look after Ryan, 7.

I couldn’t let them see his big brother like this.

Stephen held on to Tiernan, then suddenly...

‘Donna,’ Stephen shouted. ‘I think he’s going to go.’

I raced to my lad as he collapsed, started doing CPR.

The paramedics arrived 10 minutes later.

By now, Tiernan’s heart had stopped beating.

Everything moved in slow motion after that.

Tiernan was put into an ambulance, and we were raced to hospital.

Stephen and I waited outside the room, shaking.

A few minutes later, the doctor came out. ‘There’s nothing more we can do,’ he said.

In shock, I didn’t shed a tear. How could my boy be gone?

We were taken to see Tiernan’s body, on the bed.

So tall, so grown up, and yet still my baby.

‘How can I survive this?’ I sobbed. l

Lying beside him, I cried and screamed, never wanting to let him go.

We brought Tiernan home, and hundreds of his friends came to pay their respects.

On his last night, his mates stayed with him in the living room for a sleepover, eating pizza, legs under his coffin.

Always the centre of any social gathering, it felt oddly comforting.

At Tiernan’s funeral, his best friend Ethan sang Bring Him Home, and his girlfriend Lauren said some beautiful words.

Back at home, I slept on his pillows, feeling grief seeping into every cell in my body.

Part of me felt cross with Tiernan for not taking his brown inhaler. I’m convinced if he had, he’d still be here.

Now I’m working to raise awareness with Asthma UK.

This year, I’m supporting its Scarfie campaign, encouraging sufferers to wear a scarf around their nose and mouth so they don’t have an asthma attack in winter.

I urge you all to take asthma seriously. Don’t let my boy’s death be in vain. For more information, visit asthma.org.uk/scarfie

I slept on his pillows, felt grief seep into every cell