My baby lost his limbs to sepsis
A serious case of sepsis has cost little Oliver his hands and feet but his mom is just grateful he’s alive
WITH his soft, downy curls and heart-melting smile, the little boy is as cute as a button and the apple of his mom’s eye. Everywhere Abigail Wardle goes people stop to coo over her one-year-old son – although their smiles often falter when they see something sets Oliver Aisthorpe apart from other tots.
Her son has no hands and feet yet for Abigail (23), it’s a small price to pay. Oliver may have a long road ahead – physiotherapy, prosthetic limbs, a lifetime of living with a disability – but he’s alive.
And after the ordeal she endured while he fought for survival, all she cares about is that she still has her precious little boy.
Within 48 hours Abigail watched as her son went from a happy, lively baby to a child in a desperate fight for his life.
As a rampant sepsis infection surged through his body, his limbs started to die – and at one stage she watched in horror as her son’s leg began to self-amputate, coming away in her hands as she moved him from a chair to his hospital bed.
But miraculously Oliver pulled through and is due to be fitted with his first prosthetic limbs soon. They’ll have to be replaced as he grows and he’ll have to learn how to use artificial hands too but Abigail has no doubt her little fighter will manage. After all, he’s defied all the odds.
She’s chosen to tell Oliver’s story in a bid to help other parents learn how to spot sepsis, which her little boy caught through an undiagnosed throat infection. “Some people might feel sorry for us but I feel like the luckiest mom in the world,” says Abigail, a jewellery designer from Lincolnshire in the UK. “I still have Oliver with me. He may not have hands or feet but he’s still my smiley, brave little boy. What we went through was horrendous and I’ve never been so scared in my life. “But Oliver was so brave I knew I had to be brave too. I’m his mom – it’s up to me to fight for him and make him feel safe.”
She says if other parents learn through her and Oliver’s experience, it will be worth it. “I want some good to come out of what happened to Oliver.”
ALARM bells first rang one Saturday evening earlier this year when Abigail noticed Oliver’s fontanelle, the soft spot on a baby’s skull, appeared sunken. Worried he may be dehydrated, she took him to an after-hours clinic where he was examined and prescribed fluids and Calpol, an over-the-counter pain and fever syrup.
“That night his condition really deteri
orated,” Abigail says. “He became sicker and was pale and lethargic. I’d cuddle him and he’d groan as though his bones were aching.
“He’d just whimper, as though he didn’t have the energy to cry. He wouldn’t eat and he barely drank anything.
“My gut told me something wasn’t right so I took him back to the GP.”
At the surgery a nurse took one look at him and whisked him off to the hospital next door, where he was immediately sedated.
“Everything was a blur,” Abigail says. “I was just trying to hold it together as they were putting him to sleep.
“I could hear a doctor on the phone to another hospital asking for advice on how to treat Oliver.”
Meanwhile, the baby’s hands and feet started going purple. “I remember thinking he must be cold and telling them to put some socks on him.
“A doctor sat me down and said, ‘Your son is very poorly’.”
But it was only when a nurse came over to speak to Abigail that it dawned on her quite how serious it was. “She said, ‘We don’t know which way it’s going to go but it doesn’t look good’.”
Twice Abigail was told her son would not survive and at one stage she asked the hospital chaplain to baptise her boy.
INCREDIBLY, as the hours crept by, it became clear Oliver would survive – and there was no damage to his brain. But the fallout from the infection was devastating. The sepsis caused his limbs to blacken as the blood supply to his hands and feet was so low the tissue died and gangrene set in.
Amputation seemed the only option – left untreated the gangrene would threaten his life all over again.
“Oliver was out of the woods but they kept delaying a date for his amputations to try to save more of his left leg,” she said. “But I could see his body was trying to get rid of it.
“The limbs were heavy and uncomfortable and Oliver was miserable. I know it sounds like an odd thing for a mother to say but I was desperate for the doctors to take them off.”
Then the unthinkable happened.“One day, a nurse was helping me lift Oliver from his bouncy chair back into the bed and his leg just came away in my hands.
“The doctors came running in and asked me if I wanted to leave the room because it was quite distressing.
“I told them, ‘My son’s leg has just fallen off. I’m not going to leave him here’.”
Oliver was rushed into surgery and had his limbs removed and after that,
Abigail says, he was like a different child. “He was so happy and full of life. It seemed like a relief for him.”
Oliver is now back at home and adapting to his life without hands and feet.
“I’m just so proud of him,” Abigail says. “He’s so resilient. He makes me smile every day. Already he’s trying to work out how to roll over and play with his toys with his stumps.”
She counts her blessings every day that she still has her little boy with her. “I know I could’ve come out of this with no son, so that’s what I focus on. We have bad days, but I know there’ll be better days to come.”
When she feels low she makes an effort to put a smile on her face and hold her head up high as “it’s my job to teach Oliver how to handle whatever life throws at him”.
“What’s happened has happened and we just have to get on with it. But seeing his beaming face every day is enough to keep me going.”
‘We don’t know which way it’s going to go but it doesn’t look good’