She recalls her experience with meningitis here.
“On 12th June 2015 my son developed a rash that looked like a simple heat rash. It disappeared when we did the glass test so we never imagined it was meningitis. He didn't have a particularly high temperature but his head and neck were extremely warm.
We saw an out-of-hours doctor on the Sunday who was not concerned and sent us home. But on Tuesday when Sam stopped taking his milk feeds as often as usual I took him to see a GP. His temperature had risen and we were sent straight to hospital.
I would like to praise the paediatricians and nurses at Princess Alexandra Hospital, Harlow for the care they gave my son. We were admitted and they started treatment whilst tests were being done.
The tests showed that Sam had viral meningitis and so we were able to go home and continue his course of antibiotics with visits from community nurses.
Sam was never severely ill as you would normally associate with meningitis, but I believe this is because we caught it very early on so it never got to that stage.
It's a tough thing to hear that your child has meningitis and I googled it a lot once we were told! It was a very emotional and stressful time but right from the start the doctors and nurses were vigilant with assessing and monitoring Sam, from A & E right through our time on the children's ward.
We will attend a follow up appointment in six to eight weeks’ time to check his progress but as we caught it early, I hope he won't have any after-effects or long term problems. He is only five weeks old so time will tell, but I will certainly be keeping a close eye on things like his development milestones.
It just shows that parents know when something is not quite right with their children and that meningitis symptoms are not always the obvious, severe symptoms we so often associate with it.”
