Paisley Hay's story

On Boxing Day Paisley was 9 weeks old.

It had been a normal day and she had her bath and bottle as usual but during the night became very unsettled very restless and a couple of times during the night she made loud high pitched screams then continued to make grunting noises through the night that at the time I thought could possibly be constipation and she had taken her night time bottle as usual so was not too concerned at this point.

We all got up in the morning as usual. Paisley is the youngest of 4, she has 2 older sisters and a brother. But I continued to be concerned as she was still making unusual noises. Paisley started to become worse and was not alert as usual and had become pale/grey in colour so at this point I decided to take her to A&E, I still don't know why I felt going to A&E was the best place for her rather than the GP.

When we arrived at the sick kids hospital in Edinburgh they listened to my concerns and took her through to be examined straight away and they were obviously very concerned too as they ran various tests including blood tests that came back very quickly and these showed all Paisley's levels were very low and the Dr told me Paisley was very ill and she would be kept on for a couple of days for more tests.

They decided that Paisley would require a scan of abdomen and a brain scan all if this was carried out in A&E as she was too unwell to be moved. The Drs then decided to move Paisley to the HDU, she was kept in overnight and monitored when I returned first thing the morning the Dr came and told me that her blood culture had revealed she had sepsis and would require further tests including lumbar puncture to determine if she had meningitis, she had already began a course of anti-biotics and they wanted to make sure they were treating her correctly.

Paisley spent the next 10 days in hospital where she continued to receive anti biotics and further tests revealed she had meningococcal meningitis. Paisley has made a full recovery and will celebrate her 2nd birthday on 19th Oct.

Leah Small
October 2019