Mothers intuition
Meningitis is every parent’s worst nightmare but, in my case, the nightmare was even worse. My daughter’s meningococcal septicaemia was asymptomatic.
In September 2003 Antonia was seven months old and a bouncy, healthy baby. We’d just returned from a two-week break in the South of France and everybody was glowing.
The week after we returned home Antonia caught a typical baby’s cold. By the Saturday evening I thought she was much better and put her to bed that night looking forward to taking her out the next day. At that time she still slept in her cot beside our bed.
I woke at half six the next morning and suddenly heard Antonia cough. It wasn’t a chest-wrenching cough, but there was something that sounded ‘different’ about it. That’s all I can say. As mums we all know that we have a sixth sense when it comes to our kids and that – in my mind – is what this was. My mother’s intuition told me that there was something wrong.
I phoned the D-Doc, our emergency GP service and explained what had happened. ‘Are you a first-time mum?’ asked the doctor, whose name – lucky for him – I never did catch. ‘Yes’, I said. ‘I think the best thing you could do is calm yourself down and sponge your baby down,’ he said.
I hung up and phoned for an ambulance. Within fifteen minutes I was running along a corridor into the emergency paediatric section. The doctor held my daughter up in the air, checking her body for rashes. ‘How long has she had this freckle on her foot?’ he asked. Hadn’t she always had that freckle? I was so panicked that I couldn’t remember if I’d seen it before or not.
Then he said the words feared by every parent. ‘I think we’re looking at meningitis here’, he said. How could this be meningitis, I asked. Where was the rash? Where were the purple dots? There was no temperature – although I later discovered that her hands and feet were cool to the touch, which is also a classic sign.
My partner and I were dispatched to the waiting room while our seven-month-old child was subjected to a lumbar puncture. An hour later the doctor came out to join us. ‘The good news,’ he said, ‘is that it’s not meningitis. It’s some sort of blood bug but we’ve started her on the antibiotic as if it is meningitis until we know what it is exactly.’
I spent the night in the isolation ward with Antonia, who slept peacefully. It was some time before I was able to get over to sleep but I awoke the next morning to be faced by my darling little girl smiling at me. You would have thought that nothing had happened to her.
When the doctors came in to do their rounds, the consultant’s first question was ‘Have the doctors explained to you about the meningococcal septicaemia?’
I nearly collapsed.
It turned out that the blood tests had come back showing the meningococcal septicaemia. The fact that I had brought Antonia to casualty so quickly meant that her life had been saved because she had been given the necessary medication before the symptoms had had time to develop. A day later we were discharged.
Antonia’s case was certainly quite unique. A few days later, while taking her up for her daily drip, I ran into the doctor, who had treated her that Sunday morning. When he saw me, he was ashen. ‘I was off until this morning,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t believe it when I asked about your daughter and they told me what it was. I’ve never had a case of asymptomatic septicaemia before. In fact I’m on my way to a meeting of the consultants now to discuss how an illness like that can present without symptoms.’
If I needed any more proof of how lucky we had all been, that was it.
Mother's intuition is a powerful thing! If you have any stories about how you have used yours we would really love to hear more of these amazing stories!
Debbie xx
In September 2003 Antonia was seven months old and a bouncy, healthy baby. We’d just returned from a two-week break in the South of France and everybody was glowing.
The week after we returned home Antonia caught a typical baby’s cold. By the Saturday evening I thought she was much better and put her to bed that night looking forward to taking her out the next day. At that time she still slept in her cot beside our bed.
I woke at half six the next morning and suddenly heard Antonia cough. It wasn’t a chest-wrenching cough, but there was something that sounded ‘different’ about it. That’s all I can say. As mums we all know that we have a sixth sense when it comes to our kids and that – in my mind – is what this was. My mother’s intuition told me that there was something wrong.
I phoned the D-Doc, our emergency GP service and explained what had happened. ‘Are you a first-time mum?’ asked the doctor, whose name – lucky for him – I never did catch. ‘Yes’, I said. ‘I think the best thing you could do is calm yourself down and sponge your baby down,’ he said.
I hung up and phoned for an ambulance. Within fifteen minutes I was running along a corridor into the emergency paediatric section. The doctor held my daughter up in the air, checking her body for rashes. ‘How long has she had this freckle on her foot?’ he asked. Hadn’t she always had that freckle? I was so panicked that I couldn’t remember if I’d seen it before or not.
Then he said the words feared by every parent. ‘I think we’re looking at meningitis here’, he said. How could this be meningitis, I asked. Where was the rash? Where were the purple dots? There was no temperature – although I later discovered that her hands and feet were cool to the touch, which is also a classic sign.
My partner and I were dispatched to the waiting room while our seven-month-old child was subjected to a lumbar puncture. An hour later the doctor came out to join us. ‘The good news,’ he said, ‘is that it’s not meningitis. It’s some sort of blood bug but we’ve started her on the antibiotic as if it is meningitis until we know what it is exactly.’
I spent the night in the isolation ward with Antonia, who slept peacefully. It was some time before I was able to get over to sleep but I awoke the next morning to be faced by my darling little girl smiling at me. You would have thought that nothing had happened to her.
When the doctors came in to do their rounds, the consultant’s first question was ‘Have the doctors explained to you about the meningococcal septicaemia?’
I nearly collapsed.
It turned out that the blood tests had come back showing the meningococcal septicaemia. The fact that I had brought Antonia to casualty so quickly meant that her life had been saved because she had been given the necessary medication before the symptoms had had time to develop. A day later we were discharged.
Antonia’s case was certainly quite unique. A few days later, while taking her up for her daily drip, I ran into the doctor, who had treated her that Sunday morning. When he saw me, he was ashen. ‘I was off until this morning,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t believe it when I asked about your daughter and they told me what it was. I’ve never had a case of asymptomatic septicaemia before. In fact I’m on my way to a meeting of the consultants now to discuss how an illness like that can present without symptoms.’
If I needed any more proof of how lucky we had all been, that was it.
Mother's intuition is a powerful thing! If you have any stories about how you have used yours we would really love to hear more of these amazing stories!
Debbie xx
Comments