The jab that could save your teenager from the terrifying disease that stole mine in just 12 hours
After brutal meningitis strain kills her son, grieving mother backs new vaccination drive
HAVING scored top A-level grades and gained a place at Warwick University to read history, Edward Saunders had so much in life to look forward to. He dreamed of becoming a lawyer, and of writing a book.
As he reached the end of his days at Queen Elizabeth Hospital school in Bristol, he was pictured on the front of The Times celebrating his grades. His mother Tracey, felt that poignant mixture of happiness and pride, mixed with trepidation at the prospect of her 18-year-old only son flying the nest – as any naturally protective parent might.
She says: ‘We all noticed that summer he was almost skipping with happiness – he’d worked very hard for his grades. There was a trip to Venice planned as part of the course he was doing and I remember worrying he’d fall in a canal. It sounds so silly now.’
In fact, Ed, as he was affectionately known, was never to take up that place at Warwick, or to study in Venice. He wouldn’t become a lawyer, or get married and have a family of his own, or do any of the adult things his mother had hoped for.
Just weeks after getting his A-level results in 2013, Ed became one of the first British teenagers to die from a new, deadly ‘W’ strain of meningitis. And, as Tracey says, the speed at which the infection claimed his life ‘was terrifyingly fast’.
The disease is so lethal it has prompted the Government to launch a free programme of vaccinations for all freshers at university this year – and Tracey has bravely agreed to relive the agony of her son’s sudden death in a bid to urge all parents to make sure their children are protected.
The infection claimed Ed’s life within hours of his being admitted to hospital. His horrified familyy watched in shock and disbelief isbelief as doctors fought in vain to save him.
Tracey says: ‘There was a team of 20 working on him, including three consultants and two registrars. My husband Mark was stroking his feet and saying “Come on son,” and I was pleadingg with the doctors, saying, , “You’ve got to do something. . He’s too special to lose. Don’t t let him go.” But there was s nothing they could do for him. m. Ed squeezed my hand, gently, y, and then he was gone.
‘It was unbelievable, hororrendous. He was walking andnd talking three hours before he died and had the best care are possible. Yet the disease is so terrible and quick that no one could save him.’
Meningitis W is particularly aggressive – Ed died less than 12 hours after first complaining of a headache at home. Teenagers and university students are particularly vulnerable to the new virulent strain. ‘I’d never even heard of meningitis W,’ admits Tracey, a 51 yearold former teacher. ‘As a parent you worry about meningitis for babies and young children but it never crossed my mind as a concern for teenagers – and I was an anxious mother who worried all the time about my children.’
Tracey sits in the bright and homely living room of the family home near Bristol, as she shakily recalls how a mundane but happy family Sunday in September turned rapidly to tragedy.
Ed, with his dark laughing eyes, smiles out from a large photograph above her; in the well-tended garden with its fruit trees and views over a ridge of hills is a pussy willow tree he’d given his mother on Mothering Sunday six months before he died.
He had travelled to London to a Pink Floyd concert with a close friend the night before, staying up and travelling back on the early coach rather than staying the night at a hotel.
He arrived home tired but happy in time to tuck into roast lam lamb and roast potatoes. ‘Lu ‘Lunch was full of the normal family banter and laughter – there was no siw sign that anything was wrong,’ Tracey says. Given th that he’d been up all night, h his parents were not surprised when he retired to his room, in an annex of their large house, for an a afternoon nap. Nor did they think it strange when he called his mother on her phone – as he sometim sometimes did – saying he felt cold and wo would like something hot to eat. ‘I made him cheese on toast and we got him his slippers and dressing gown and left him to sleep.
‘By 11.30pm, Ed was complaining of a headache; we brought him a paracetamol and he slept again. At 2.30am he called me and said he’d been sick. He said he’d eaten a dodgy chicken kebab at the concert. I thought he had a stomach bug.
‘At 4.30am he was sick again and had a stomach ache so I called 111. The operator asked questions about whether he had a stiff neck, a rash or an aversion to bright lights – all symptoms of meningitis – but he didn’t have any of them. A GP arrived around 5.30am and at first everything was quite casual because we still believed it was food poisoning. However, she was concerned that she couldn’t get a reading for his blood pressure – then he got a purple hue around his throat. Within five minutes the same rash appeared on his arms and torso. It didn’t look like a typical rash at all – it was more a faint all-over tint to his skin.’
The GP immediately suspected meningitis, called an ambulance, administered antibiotics and requested an emergency team to be wait-
ing at Bristol Royal Infirmary, around 25 minutes away by road.
Tracey and the doctor travelled to hospital with Ed in the ambulance; Ed’s dad Mark, a 53 year-old businessman, followed behind with sister Emily in the car. By the time he arrived in hospital, at 7.20am, Ed needed an oxygen mask to breathe. But he was still able to get off a trolley and to apologise to the doctors for ‘being such a bother’.
‘At this point Mark and I were panicking. We were ushered into a waiting room while the doctors worked on Ed. At 9am a consultant came in to warn us there was only a 25 per cent chance he would survive.
‘We all went in and gave him a kiss. He looked at me and I told him he was doing great. But they couldn’t stabilise him. We were all there when his heart stopped at 10am.’
After Ed’s death, says Tracey, she and Mark were ‘complete wrecks’. ‘Emily was the strong one who had to help organise the funeral. I’ve always been a positive person, but I was totally immobilised. I couldn’t even make a cup of coffee.’
Slowly and painfully, time has helped Ed’s family to regain some normality. They recently celebrated Emily’s maths degree and she’s now 23 and about to start her first job.
Two years on, they have channelled their energies into publishing a book called Robey And The Dentist, in Ed’s memory. The beautifully illustrated story is based on a school assignment Ed wrote and illustrated when he was only 11. It’s intended to reassure younger readers about an impending trip to the dentist. All profits will go to the charity Meningitis Now.
Treasured elements of Ed’s own childhood are featured in the illustrations – from his cuddly Bongo monkey to the cowboy outfits he loved to dress up in as a boy.
‘Part of Ed still lives on in this book, although meningitis robbed him of the chance to be an author as he dreamed,’ Tracey says.
‘We are proud that it will raise funds and above all we hope that this will help to raise awareness to save another child from dying of this terrible disease.’