Our beautiful son, Oráin, lost his life to meningitis the day before his second birthday. He was a beautiful, carefree, mischievous little boy with the most gorgeous blonde hair and blue eyes. He was loved by everyone who knew him. He was the first and only grandchild on my side of the family and had an older and younger cousin on my husband's side of the family.
The day he became unwell, his daddy was taking care of him. He was fine when he woke, but later in the day, after being in the car, he vomited. However, we thought it was just the journey as he had done this before. When I came home from work around 8pm we had food and went to bed as normal. He was in good form, ate his food and had a bottle before bed.
During the night, he woke and vomited again and he also had a high temperature. The colour of the vomit was green - I will always remember that. We rang the on-call doctor, who agreed to review him. We brought him to the doctor, who diagnosed gastroenteritis and told us to bring him to our GP the next day if we were not happy with him.
When we came home, he slept all night. The next morning, he was dull and lethargic. I wasn't happy with him, so I decided to go to our GP. I arrived at the practice, and Oráin was asleep on my knee. When the doctor reviewed him, he was rousable and also had soiled his nappy, keeping with the earlier diagnosis of gastroenteritis. The GP told me to bring him to the hospital as he thought he was dehydrated.
When I left the GP surgery, I changed his nappy in the car. He didn’t have a rash and he wasn't crying - he was just lethargic and vomiting. We put the sleeping down to being tired from vomiting and the fact that he was awake during the night.
We went straight to the paediatric ward where the staff were waiting for us as the GP had rang ahead. At this stage, Oráin was getting more difficult to rouse. When the staff took off his clothes, including his nappy, the rash was there, despite there being nothing twenty minutes earlier. He was given IV fluids and IV antibiotics immediately. Oráin started to become more alert and was chatting to us. He was looking for juice and toast.
The doctors told us they were almost certain he had meningitis. His bloods were sent to the lab and we were sent to an isolation room. At this point, he didn't seem very unwell; we never could have imagined what was in store. After a few hours, it was decided he would be moved to the intensive care unit (ICU). In the ICU, he was still talking to us and he didn't seem that sick to us.
The doctors decided they would ventilate him to give him some rest and that they could do it safely and controlled before it became an emergency and a matter of urgency. Our family were all there and got to speak to him before he was put on life support.
During that Wednesday night, we knew that the doctors were not happy with him. The paediatric consultant didn't go home - she stayed there all night. As morning approached, we were told that he was really sick and had gone into disseminated intravascular coagulation (DIC) - a disorder that was affecting his clotting. After a lot of talking and planning, it was decided that he would be transferred to a specialist children's ICU in Dublin. He was transferred there by helicopter; the team came from Dublin for him. We couldn’t go with him in the helicopter, so we travelled by car.
When we arrived, the staff were happy with him and said he was sick but stable. Again, during the night, his condition deteriorated. A brain scan in the morning showed he had brain stem death and was only being kept alive by the life support machine. This was the day before his second birthday.
At no stage did we think he was really sick. He didn't complain of a headache or complain about the lights. Although he was only two, he was very smart and knew lots of words, so he definitely would have been able to tell us.
We now have three other children, who on occasions have all had various minor illnesses and for short times would have seemed sicker than Oráin was that day he first became unwell. I would like to highlight that someone can have meningitis without all the symptoms and even sometimes the professional can miss them. If you ever even think for one second when someone is sick, “Could this be meningitis?” say it out loud, seek advice and hopefully rule it out.
Our lives have changed forever. Oráin will always be the missing part of us. We should be celebrating his 23rd birthday this year but as always, we will remember the two precious years we had with him 🩵🩵
