“Jacob was almost three years old and really active. He went to playgroup three times a week. On the Monday he got up fine but later felt ill and was violently sick.
We decided he was better staying off and thought he had just caught a sickness bug from the playgroup.
“My mum-in-law was looking after him for us to go to work (he was sick with her not us) and she said he didn't seem right. She called us to leave work and my husband got home first. He rang the GP because he had palpitations.
“They went to the GP and noticed the first spot; he sent us to hospital as a precaution. By the time we got there the septicaemia rash covered him from head to toe. A&E staff started treatment for meningitis straight away just on the basis of the rash.
“He ended up in Child’s Intensive Care in Cardiff, where he stayed for almost two weeks. He was ventilated, put into an artificial coma (which he had trouble coming out of) and we almost lost him.
“He went to the child’s ward in Cardiff and then Newport. We were in almost a month. He had to learn to lift his head again, sit up again, crawl and walk again. It was heartbreaking to see him lying there when there was nothing we could do. It has left him with diplegic spastic cerebral palsy of his legs, a condition for life.”
