Melissa survived sepsis . . . only to see it kill her little boy
Now she hopes her haunting story will help other families avoid tragedy
MELISSA MEAd finds it hard to recall the time when she knew nothing about sepsis or the devastating swiftness with which it can kill. Since her baby son, William, died from it, aged one, in december 2014, following a catalogue of errors, misdiagnoses and missed opportunities by doctors and the NHS helpline, she’s become an expert on the subject, campaigning to raise awareness and ensure others don’t die needlessly.
So consider her shock when she learned, only months ago, that she herself had almost died from the condition. Following surgery in 2011, she became critically ill with an infection.
The revelation that the infection was sepsis came during a session with the psychiatrist who has treated her for depression and post-traumatic shock since William died.
‘There are no words to explain how profoundly the trauma of losing William affected my mental health,’ she recalls. ‘I am still having intensive therapy, and during one session my psychiatrist asked me: “How does it make you feel to know you survived sepsis and William didn’t?” I was confused. I said: “What do you mean?”
‘He has access to my medical notes and he said: “When you were very ill in hospital five years ago, you had sepsis.”
‘I can’t really remember the rest of the conversation because I was so shocked. I asked him to explain and he told me the infection after my operation was sepsis.
‘I wonder now if I’d been aware of what it was and what to look out for, whether we’d have been more alert to the symptoms when William developed it.
‘We should have been told. If we had been, things could have been so different.’
Melissa, 29, who is five months pregnant with her second child, has reason to be angry. But she focuses her efforts on a campaign to raise awareness of the condition, which kills 44,000 people a year in the UK.
Earlier this year, she met Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt, who announced in April that he was throwing Government weight behind a public health initiative, backed by the daily Mail and the UK Sepsis Trust. But a subsequent meeting with Mr Hunt — due to have taken place this week — has been postponed, and she’s urging prompt action.
‘It is vital the message gets out to people,’ she says. ‘Every day in the UK, four children and 120 adults die from it, and many of those lives could be saved if people knew what to look for.
‘There is not a single symptom that screams out, but several, so it can be quite confusing to pinpoint. The message should centre on simply getting the word sepsis into everyone’s minds.’
SHE adds: ‘They should ask their doctor: “Could this be sepsis?” And if lives are to be saved, it is crucial to act quickly, within the “golden hour” of the condition setting in.
‘Everyone should be sepsis aware, and it won’t cost millions to get the message across. The worst thing is knowing William died needlessly.’
Sepsis is a dangerously fast-moving condition where the body’s immune system over-reacts to an infection, which can be caused by anything from a cough to a cut.
The immune system attacks not only the invading bacteria, but also its own tissues and organs. If spotted in time, it is easy to treat with strong antibiotics, delivered intravenously — but delays can prove fatal.
When Melissa looks back on her own experience of sepsis she realises how perilously close to death she came.
In April 2011, she’d been suffering severe stomach pains and a urinary tract infection.
She left her office, where she is PA to a financial director, to see her GP who, believing she had appendicitis, arranged for her to have surgery urgently at the hospital near her home in Penryn, Cornwall.
‘I was breathless with pain; faint, dizzy, sick,’ she recalls. She collapsed as she walked to the hospital and a passing police car called an ambulance. In the early hours of the morning she had an emergency appendectomy.
Her partner Paul, a telecoms engineer, was away on a training course in Yorkshire with the Territorial Army. ‘I didn’t want to worry him, so I didn’t tell him I was ill,’ says Melissa.
‘The next day they were going to discharge me, but I remember struggling down the corridor clutching the wall for support and crying in pain. A nurse saw me and arranged for me to stay another night. The next day I felt a bit better, so I was sent home with painkillers.’
By then Paul had arrived home to find Melissa very ill. ‘He took me to the doctor’s and I couldn’t even get to the surgery without vomiting. I was readmitted to hospital, but then sent home again.
‘That night I became very ill. My temperature soared to 41c, I started hallucinating, imagining there were spiders crawling over me, and was talking gibberish. Paul took me to the out-of-hours doctor, who called the hospital and I was readmitted for a third time.
‘My temperature was still high, but I felt clammy and cold. I felt so ill I just wanted to close my eyes and die. If someone had offered me a pill to end my life then, I would have gladly taken it.’
Paul made urgent calls to Spain where Melissa’s parents, Lesley and Bernard, and sister, Louise, live. She remembers her mum and sister sitting at her bedside, their faces etched with worry. A scan revealed that Melissa was suffering from a pelvic abscess — her appendix, it emerged, had been taken out needlessly.
She had surgery to remove the abscess and a drain fitted. But it was sepsis that threatened her life.
‘The situations were very different for William and me, and sepsis presented differently in both of us,’ she says. ‘William had a chesty cough; mine began with a urinary tract infection.
‘I struggle to piece together everything that happened then, it’s just a blur. But if I’d been told I’d had sepsis I would have been aware of its dangers, conscious that it was something to look out for.’
Fortunately in Melissa’s case prompt treatment with fluids and intravenous antibiotics saved her life, but the haul back to health was painstaking.
Overwhelmed by tiredness, loss of appetite and sickness, she lost 2 st and was off work for two-and-ahalf months. It was another year, she says, before she felt ‘normal’.
Today, she is beset not only by grief that sometimes threatens to engulf her, but also by guilt that she is alive while William died.
‘I’d have given my last breath so my child could live,’ she says.
WILLIAM had been suffering from a persistent, stubborn cough for three months and although his parents — diligent, articulate and caring — had taken him repeatedly to doctors, vital warning signs that he was critically ill were missed.
An inquiry after his death revealed that there had been a staggering 15 failures in his care.
Yet had William been correctly diagnosed, there is a ‘very good chance’, the expert witness at his inquest stated, that he would still be here today. William was particularly treasured because Melissa had not believed she would ever become pregnant. She has only half an ovary, following seven operations to remove three ovarian tumours.
But then — after she and Paul, 32, had been together for ten years — she became pregnant.
Now that she is pregnant again, she grapples with a complex amalgam of emotions.
‘In a way, I think of this new baby as a gift from William. Of course, we feel joy, but it is mixed with such profound regret that he is not here to share the new baby with us.’
She gains solace, however, from her sepsis awareness campaign and the many messages of gratitude she has received from those who, through hearing William’s story, have been alert to symptoms.
She treasures a letter from a mother who hoped it would bring a ‘tiny chink of happiness’ to Melissa to know her daughter had been saved thanks to William’s story.
A husband contacted her to express his heartfelt thanks: his wife, who had just given birth to their first child, had developed sepsis but was saved by swift medical intervention.
‘Seeing you on TV planted a thought. It made me call triage [where patients are assessed for urgency]. You saved my family,’ he wrote.
‘It makes me feel very humble,’ says Melissa. ‘I think, “My little boy has helped saved lives”, and he’ll live on in people’s minds because of that.
‘I’ve been told I’m brave, but I’m not. I’m just a mum who loved her son, and by campaigning in his name, by telling his story — even though, every time I re-live the trauma of his death it causes me terrible pain — it allows me still to be William’s mum.
‘All I can do is get through each day and take comfort from the fact that William is helping to save others’ lives.’
YOU can donate to the UK Sepsis Trust via justgiving.com/ williamoscarmead or by guessing the credentials of Melissa’s new baby, whatsinmybelly.com/babypool-guess-the-peanut-11459