Poppy-Jo Adam's story

Poppy-Jo was only 3 weeks old when we woke in the middle of the night to find her making strange noises and her eyes were turning in, we phoned 111 and they could hear her and sent for an ambulance, when the ambulance arrived they assumed she just had a cold and advised us to give her paracetamol and see the GP in the morning.

A couple of hours later I was worried she was getting worse so took her straight to A&E, once we arrived she was examined and rushed through due to sepsis symptoms, once we were on the ward a critical care doctor came to see her and noticed her skin was mottled but no rash, But decided to start high dose antibiotics and treat for meningitis until it's confirmed, once she had her lumbar puncture the doctor told us he was 90% sure it was meningitis but had to wait for the official results and kept her on the antibiotics.

While she was in hospital they noticed the noise and eye turning were actually seizures, so she was started on anti-seizure medication, it was so hard seeing our tiny baby hooked up to all these machines, her heart rate started dropping dramatically so had an echo and found to have a hole in her heart, but her heart rate returned to normal, and she seemed to be getting better.

We were discharged after 4 days with IV antibiotics, after 3 days we went back to the hospital as her cannula had blown and while there they saw she still had a fever, so ran some tests and her white cell count was still a lot higher than it should be, we were re-admitted that evening and after conversations with great Ormond street her antibiotic was changed, after another week in hospital we were discharged again.

We had to return to the hospital twice a day for antibiotics for 10 days, on Christmas Eve 2019 her cannula was removed. We had follow-ups with cardiologist, immunologists and hearing and sight specialists, as of today she has no current side effects! We are so proud of our little warrior