Mum's agony as daughter comes home from school with 'sniffles' and dies next day
A woman who says she 'failed' as a mother has shared the heartbreaking story of how her seven-year-old daughter came home from school with the 'sniffles' and died just a day later.
Clare Louise, 54, and husband Matt, 52, lost their daughter Annaliese in the summer of 2018 to what they thought was a cold but turned out to be a fatal infection.
The youngster went to school in the morning but Clare was soon asked to pick her up early as she was "quite lethargic" and her hip was hurting. She took her daughter to the GP and the hospital and she was later discharged after having tests.
But the following day, Annaliese was "crying with pain", and had diarrhoea and "mottled" thighs. Clare rushed her child back to hospital as her condition began to worsen. They arrived at 10am, but tragically by 1pm, the child had died of iGAS - a serious strep A infection that had turned into sepsis.
According to the NHS, invasive group A streptococcal disease is a serious strep A infection where the bacteria are isolated from a normally sterile body site, such as the blood.
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Clare has been sharing her story (PA Real Life)
Annaliese came home from school with 'sniffles' and tragically died a day later (PA Real Life)Clare, the co-founder of a business communications consultancy, was left "totally in shock" and could not help but feel like she "failed". She said: "When she died, I was totally in shock, I was just on autopilot and somehow rang all of our family and friends. We all had to have tests and medication straight away to check if we had iGAS too, which was absolutely surreal. We were all so distressed and my brain was going at 1000 miles per hour – I couldn't take in the enormity of it. I didn't realise at that moment that my life had changed forever."
She continued to recall the time leading up to her daughter's death, saying: "She woke up with a bit of a cold and the sniffles, but it wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. She went to bed early and the next day she said she felt a bit better, so she got up and went to school. She was still under the weather, and at lunchtime, I got a call from the school saying she was very distressed, and when I picked her up, she was quite lethargic.
"Her temperature was high, and she was sleeping on the sofa, and I was just keeping an eye on her really. She said her leg was really hurting, so I began to get concerned. I took her to the GP at about five in the afternoon and she was really quiet – I remember she was curled up on the waiting room chairs. They recommended that I take her to the hospital – near us, there is a day ward and we popped her there. They took a scan of her hip and took her blood and she was discharged. But it was getting worse – she walked into the hospital but was wheeled out in a wheelchair.”
At that point, Clare was told that her daughter's aches and pains were likely because of a cold. "I was concerned, but not really really worried," she admitted. But, in the middle of the night, Annaliese began "crying with pain" and woke up with diarrhoea. Clare continued: "She was still quite tired too, I remember putting her in front of the TV to watch her favourite film, Cinderella. I remember taking her trousers down when she went to the toilet and her thighs were all mottled – at that point, I rang the hospital straight away. She was in the hospital at 10 o'clock and she died at one in the afternoon. As it turned out, she had iGAS (Invasive group A streptococcal disease) which had turned into sepsis. It could have been treated with antibiotics but it wasn’t picked up on – as a mum, I felt like I failed."
Her condition quickly got worse (PA Real Life)
Her mum was left 'totally in shock' after her death (PA Real Life)Clare found the grieving process very difficult at first, feeling isolated and struggling to talk to others as they didn't understand what she was going through. She told how she would go out and try to avoid making eye contact with anyone and dreaded seeing anyone she knew as she didn't want to talk about it. "It was also really hard for everyone in the family, like my son, who was only about five at the time, and could not understand what had happened to his sister," she said.
The Compassionate Friends, a charity supporting bereaved parents and their families, helped Clare get back on her feet and Clare and her family slowly began to realise that "grief doesn’t go away" and had to learn how to manage day-to-day life. The mum has since written a book, called And Always Annaliese to help others with grief and loss, adding that Annalise "is still a part of (her) family and always will (be)".
She explained: "I want to share our story, offer a glimmer of hope, because she is very much still a part of the family. The first 18 months to two years was really tough, and then very gradually, there started to be glimpses of blue sky, where you might have a moment where something makes you laugh, or you have a moment of peacefulness. I think as time goes on, the sky becomes a bit bigger and a bit clearer. But I of course still get upset and have days where I let myself cry and cry."
Clare's book is available on Amazon at: amazon.co.uk/Always-Annaliese-Learning-Death-Daughter-ebook/dp/B0C3SK2G8B/
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