"On 2nd January, 2013, Maz fell ill. He was having problems for a while with other issues but as normal we thought it was a normal bug that was going around.
"He was complaining of headaches, pain in his back. He said he had hurt his right arm, which had swollen, and thought he had broken it. It was very painful. I said to him he needed to go to hospital to check it out.
On 4th January, Maz then complained both arms and feet were painful, he couldn’t get dressed or do basic day-to-day things. My friend took him to the A&E department, who sent him away as he wasn’t an emergency, and sent him to out-of-hours doctors.
The doctor said he has swollen joints and took bloods. He was sent home with very strong painkillers. He came home around 11.45am, sat with me for a bit and then went to bed. Within an hour, I went to see him, to see if he wanted any food or drink. At the time, he had a headache and did not like the light, and was in darkness in the room."
In a lot of pain
"At around 3.30pm, he started to vomit badly. Over the hour, it kept going. I thought it was the painkillers’ symptoms. He was in a lot of pain and couldn’t move. At 8.30pm, I went to see him, I had been up and down the stairs all day, every half-an-hour, and was taking care of my 11, 7 and seven-month-old children.
I rang the out-of-hours doctor. They said they couldn’t get out until 12am. Within an hour, I went back up to see him, he looked at me and his eyes stared, moving left to right very quickly. I rang an ambulance and when they came I told them the symptoms. He was very confused, dehydrated and still vomiting, he had a temp of 39.9 and the paramedics took him.
At 11pm, I rang the hospital to see how he was and they told me to ring in a couple of hours as he was still waiting to be seen. At 1am, I rang the hospital and they said he had a nasty infection, I said I would ring in a couple of hours, but within 10 minutes, I knew something was wrong. I went to A&E and within 10 minutes I saw Maz rushed to have a CT scan and then doctors came to get me.
They tried so hard to save him, but it was too aggressive and sadly I was told he had died on Sunday 6 January 2013 at 11.30am of meningococcal meningitis, septicaemia and brain stem cell damage."
