Waking with leg pain saved Ella
Tot almost died from meningitis
Little Ella Stewart’s life was saved because she woke up in the early hours with sore legs.
The four- year- old was suffering from a rare form of bacterial meningitis and doctors believe if she had slept for another three hours, they wouldn’t have been able to save her.
Ella needed life- support and adrenaline infusions to keep her heart pumping and had heat- straps attached to her hands and feet to prevent them being amputated.
She also suffered a collapsed lung and was so ill that doctors in two different hospitals feared that she might not pull through.
The sudden illness was even more shocking because less than 12 hours previously, Ella had been happily playing outside on her scooter with sister Lucie, five.
Mum Jenna McFadzean, 27, of Maybole, said: “It happened so quickly, from her being fine to fighting for her life. I was terrified.
“Ella saved her own life by waking up when she did because at the hospital, they said if it had been at eight o’clock, she would have been dead. I’d normally just have been waking her up at that time.”
Ella had first woken up at 11pm. She was sick and had a temperature but Jenna thought it was just a bug.
She gave her Calpol and put her back to bed.
When she woke up again at 5am complaining of pain in her legs, her temperature was up to 41.9C and Jenna knew it was something more serious.
Ella began hallucinating and she struggled to cope with the lights being switched on. She also complained of a sore head.
Jenna phoned for an ambulance and Ella was taken to Crosshouse Hospital, near Kilmarnock.
She collapsed soon after arrival and was hooked up to a ventilator.
Doctors confirmed she had bacterial meningitis and blood poisoning.
Jenna added: “She had lines going into the main arteries in her neck and groin, drips in both arms and a feeding peg down her nose.
“She needed a line into an artery giving her adrenaline and every time they took that off, her blood pressure plummeted again. I was hysterical.”
Later that morning, Ella was transferred to Glasgow Children’s Hospital.
Jenna said: “When we were leaving Crosshouse, one of the nurses was crying and said, ‘ I’m so sorry’. I thought, ‘ Everyone thinks she’s away’.
“My auntie is a nurse at the hospital and she said that the doctors are so surprised she is still here.”
In the Glasgow hospital, Ella’s condition deteriorated and her right lung collapsed. Doctors had to tell Jenna to brace herself for the worse.
She added: “You never want to hear the words that it’s touch and go for your child to survive. My face was so sore from crying.”
Remarkably, Ella’s condition improved and she was able to come off the ventilator after three days. After that, she made a speedy recovery and now, just over a month later, she is fighting fit.
Jenna said: “Seeing her out playing again is amazing.
“She has done brilliantly and come through it all with no lasting damage.”
It wasn’t the first time the young mum had heard doctors tell her she could lose a child.
In 2014, Lucie became dangerously ill with complications of Type- 1 diabetes.
But she, too, made a remarkable recovery.
It is thought that about one in every 10 people who contracts bacterial meningitis will die and one in seven who survive will be left with lasting damage.
Ella saved her own life by waking up when she did