Florence Peaty's story

My beautiful 4 yr. old Florence, aka Floflo, began feeling poorly on the Wednesday.

Florence has complex needs including severe asthma, so the day was worrying but nothing out of the usual .... In fact by the time I’d taken her siblings to school and got her on the couch I thought she was fine.
At midday I took Flo for a wee, she cried with tummy pain and I thought she had a water infection as she started with a temp she then said she felt sick.... within seconds she was struggling to breathe. I called 999 and we were taken to Whiston Hospital.

The nurse and doctor took Floflo straight to resus and both me and daddy stayed with her. This was the most traumatic experience, she couldn’t breathe or get her temp down. As they stuck needles in her, she was so poorly she didn’t react. We were told they had one chance of opening her airways, if it didn’t work she would be intubated.... Thank god it worked and after 5 hours we were transferred to High Dependency..... I thought I was going to lose my baby girl.... I thought her asthma had done this.

After a few days a doctor sat us down and said he was pretty sure Flo had meningitis and she was to go to theatre for a lumbar puncture and to have a long line fitted for iv antibiotics and tests.

I took Floflo to theatre and daddy and I waited outside the doors. I’ve never been so relieved to see her.
Back in her hospital room with Grandma,  the doctor came in and said it was meningitis but we would have to wait up to 48hrs to find out the strain ... Flo was put straight on antibiotics and the nurses were amazing.