My name is Sherin Dumond. I wanted to introduce myself to you since we lost a ten-month-old baby girl to meningococcemia in 1978. We are located in Abbeville, Louisiana.
It happened so fast and as a young parent and hospital emergency room (ER) doctor not trained, my daughter was put in a hospital room with no urgency and medical attention. A pediatrician would be available the next day .
The day started normally, my baby was fine and she ate a good lunch. I put her down for a nap and about twenty minutes later I went to check up on her and she was hot. I picked her up and she was floppy with no sound.
We rushed her to the ER. I remember so vividly my baby on the ER bed doctor checking her fever. She was not crying or anything, her eyes were not opening and there was one mosquito-looking bite on her tummy. The doctor ran blood tests and nothing showed up. The ER doctor asked about the pediatrician who was at a pediatrics conference and would be back the next day. The doctor advised us to bring her to his hospital.
We entered that hospital around two, they put us in a room and I remember trying to give her Tylenol but she would vomit it. She never cried and just kept sleeping.
At around 6:00pm, I needed to change her diaper and noticed the mosquito-looking bite was now a bruise so I called a nurse and that was when there was urgency and the ER floor doctor was called. By 11:00pm they transferred her to a larger hospital and my husband and I followed in an ambulance. She died by 12 am – she had crashed on the way and I never saw her again.
She died on June 4th 1977. I never got to see her body and we had to bury her in a closed casket. On June 5th the pediatrician called me at the funeral home crying. He advised me she had meningococcemia but the blood test results took two days to show what she had. Her pediatrician had seen a case of this where the baby survived but the mother also came down with it and died. I know now that advancements have come a long way.
I hope you tell this story to your colleagues of Crystal Brooke Dumond, a meningitis angel born August 2nd, 1977 and died on July 4th, 1978.
Sherin Dumond (Crystal's mother)
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