Reilly Parkes' story

My son was born after a difficult delivery . He was covered in his own faeces, grade 3 meconium.

Five hours after he was born he was making a "squeaking" sound when he breathed and was whisked away to PICU. Straightaway he was put on iv antibiotics and had a lumbar puncture. We were kept in hospital for 5 days without any answers. It was Christmas time so we were sent home and told he had a bacterial infection but they didn't know what. 

Two weeks later I was round my parents’ house, he was sleeping and "twitching” in his sleep. My stepdad is a GP and was immediately concerned. We got blue lighted to hospital where he endured a further 10 lumbar punctures, each one unsuccessful. He was put on strong iv antibiotics. I later discovered he originally had E.coli septicaemia and had now developed meningitis . He remained on antibiotics for 10 days. 

After discharge he was followed up in Outpatients for a year. He had problems with severe reflux and was put on domperidone and omeprazole. Six years on he is at school and we are having issues with his learning. He seems to have issues with his memory. For instance he learnt the days of the week when he was at nursery. We were discussing what we were doing during the school holidays and he could not name the days of the week. He also has issues with reading .

He will have good days and bad days but we are noticing these problems more often now. He is falling behind at school and has problems with concentration. We didn’t know that meningitis as a baby could cause these type of after effects.

Debbie Parkes
March 2015