BACK FROM THE BRINK
Mystery illness almost claimed baby’s life
FAMILY WAS TOLD TO SAY THEIR GOODBYES ON WARD
JUST five days after bringing her newborn son home from hospital, Lana Corbett was plunged into every mum’s worst nightmare.
After a routine home visit from a health visitor, baby Nathan Latimer was rushed back into hospital with stiffness and breathing difficulties.
From being a seemingly healthy baby, Nathan was hooked up to hospital machines and spent more than a month fighting for his life at Newcastle’s Great North Children’s Hospital.
As their son lay in an induced coma, devastated parents Lana and Kyle, both 25, were told to say their goodbyes.
But Nathan battled back from the brink of death and the brave threemonth-old is now at home with his family in Wallsend. Now Lana and Kyle have spoken of their constant worry as they still don’t know what almost cost their son his life.
Despite treating Nathan for sepsis, meningitis and strep B, doctors still have no idea which, if any, caused him to become so ill.
Shop cashier Lana, who is also mum to Courtney, eight, and fiveyear-old Ellie-May, said Nathan seemed “perfectly healthy” until he was five days old.
“A health visitor came out to see him and noticed his legs and arms were quite stiff and he wasn’t breathing properly,” she said.
“We put everything down and rang the ambulance - he went straight to hospital.”
Nathan was rushed to intensive care where he remained in an induced coma for several weeks.
After two days he had to be resuscitated by medics, who gave Lana and Kyle some heartbreaking news. Lana said: “We got pulled aside and told they didn’t think he was going to come through.
“He was only seven days old. We thought that was it and we prepared to say goodbye to him - we were allowed to go in and see him after he was put into the coma.”
As she watched her tiny son fight for his life, Lana took hundreds of photos in case it was the last time she ever saw him.
“He had lots of wires all over his body, he even had to have one drilled into his shin,” she said.
“He was the youngest on the ward but he was also the most ill. It was hard hearing all the other babies crying and making noises and he wasn’t making any.”
At one point the mystery condition that was making Nathan ill caused his kidneys and liver to fail.
He spent weeks in hospital feeding and breathing through tubes, leaving his face so swollen that he couldn’t open his eyes.
While Nathan was being treated in hospital, his parents were given free ‘Home from Home’ accommodation at Crawford House, just minutes from their baby’s bedside.
And as he started to show small signs of improvement, he was moved onto another hospital ward, and after just over a month returned home with his parents and two sisters.
He remains on medication and may soon have to go to Leeds to see a liver specialist, but his parents still have no answers as to what exactly caused his illness.
Lana said: “He’s doing much better at the moment but it still doesn’t give you piece of mind not knowing what was wrong with him. We’ve been told it was an infection, but whether it was sepsis, meningitis, strep B or something else we don’t know. They said if he had been left any longer he would have just died at home, and knowing my little boy might not have been here now is very scary.”