Samantha, mum to Harrison, says:
“Harrison was three weeks and five days old when he started crying around 7pm. We put it down to colic or possible constipation. We went to bed, knowing he usually woke up for a feed every three hours. He settled for a while, and I fell asleep.
I woke up around 7.30am and knew something wasn’t right. He was lifeless. I picked him up and could feel the life draining out of his body. My mum was on the phone to 999. On arrival at the hospital, he was resuscitated twice. We were asked if we wanted to christen him before they transferred him to a nearby children’s hospital, as they weren’t sure he would make the transfer. Later that day, his MRI scan showed severe swelling. He had lumbar punctures, but we had to wait for the results. He lost circulation in his right leg; his veins collapsed, he had lines for medication on his chest, on his legs (he looked like a spaghetti junction), everywhere possible, as well as being ventilated.
Five days passed, and after another MRI showed severe damage to his brain, they said we needed to make a decision to turn off his life support machine. We went to a hospice to do this, where miraculously, he survived. They said once the ventilator was off, he would survive for a minute, an hour or maybe a day. It was a waiting game.
Harrison is now ten years old! He has brain damage, global learning delay, cerebral palsy, right-sided deafness and eyesight problems but smashes through life just like he did when he had group B strep meningitis and sepsis! He’s my warrior, my miracle!”
