On the 4 May, 2013, our daughter Allison celebrated her 37th birthday. My wife Gloria and I went to visit her in Derbyshire where she lives and we all had a lovely time. Allison is not a drinker so she had a quiet night in.

Six days later, I got a call saying she had a chest infection and was going to the hospital to get it checked over. Later that day, I received another call to say she had to be admitted to intensive care to have emergency work done to drain the lung and the surrounding area. Allison had to be put to sleep for this and I decided to visit her on the Saturday morning. But I got another call, this time at 2am on Saturday, waking me with the dreadful information that her life was under threat and would we come immediately to the hospital. This turned out to be pneumonia. I was told this is just a bug with random consequences. Some people don't even know they have it. For others, it can be a killer.

That was the awful dilemma facing us on May 11, just a week after her birthday. We rushed to the hospital to see our daughter on a life-support machine and were told she was "very poorly." Allison was on 100 per cent oxygen. There were drains in her lungs and around those vital organs.

For 20 days this went on with no change. We have been told the machine is just keeping her alive and she is having antibiotics constantly but the lungs will not clear. We went to see the doctor on May 27 and he told us they can do no more for her and that what they have done is simply not working.

At this time her kidneys and other organs were OK. It is just the lungs which were not responding. If the other organs start to fail, all they can do is let her die. On that evening, we received a call to say her stats had gone down and would we come in at once.

We expected her to die that night as I went in with the boy friend of my other daughter.At 1am on the 28th, her stats went back up slightly. I could not bear waiting any longer so I came home. This is a terrible time. You feel like vultures waiting for something to happen and so I came home. I wanted so badly for her to live and recover and not wait for her to die. That night, I was physically shattered and had to catch up my rest. I phoned in to ask and she is now also on a kidney machine which drains fluid off. We went in again on the 29th and there was still no change, although her stats had gone up slightly.

I asked for the cost of this bed and treatment and was told £6,000 for every 24 hours. Allison has had three weeks of this and there is still no change. You never think of intensive care and if you do, it's always for someone else.

Not any more for me.

I have visited the intensive care ward and witnessed the efforts to help Allison. There are 20 beds in use. Every bed has a trained nurse 24 hours a day caring for the patient.

All this has inspired me to contact Businesses in Derbyshire to offer my services to headbalance their product with a sign with their information on to use as a promotional photo. John would like the cost of the items balanced or the product donated for raffle; the weight up to 100Kg. Any cheques should be made payable to the ROYAL DERBY INTENSIVE CARE UNIT

John will be doing this free and all the money raised will be given to ROYAL DERBY INTENSIVE CARE UNIT