'My girl's meningitis was diagnosed as ear infection'

[Northerner]

It was a Sunday last August and Kirstie Walkden's nine-month-old daughter, Amy, had been out of sorts for a few days.

Worried, she decided to take her to the local accident and emergency unit, where Amy was diagnosed with an ear infection and sent home with some medicine.

Two days later, her condition had worsened. She had a sky-high temperature, was no longer eating or drinking and had gone floppy.

Her mother took her back to the hospital. "All hell broke lose," says Mrs Walkden, 29. "Within an hour, she was placed in an induced coma. She was diagnosed with sepsis and then later peneumococcal meningitis."

It was 18 days before she was ready to be discharged.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-45501854

 

[Drummer]

My niece has Turner's syndrome.
Quite some time ago now, when her daughter was lying unmoving on a cot with her eyes rolled up and a high temperature not responding to the antibiotics, my sister was sitting with the photos she'd just collected - it was before the days of digital.
She was weeping over the images of her daughter a few weeks earlier, at Christmas time, unwrapping presents and at a party.
A nurse came in to check on the child and saw the photos.
"Oh - I didn't realise you had another child."
My sister said she stared at her 'gone out'
"That's her," she said. "Do you think she's usually like this?"
The nurse took a photo and ran out of the room and down the corridor - ten minutes later they were taking the child off to have a lumbar puncture and meningitis was diagnosed. My sister had to point out to the doctor who came in that the child was holding her neck rigid and that the only response he'd got was when he'd sat her up by putting a hand behind her head, when she'd cried out in pain - which he ignored and sat her up anyway. She said his expression went from smug to really concerned is two seconds flat and he was rapping out orders for tests and treatment like a machine gun and scribbling all over the record sheet.