I Am So Scared When My Daughter Gets Sick

I’m scared when my daughter gets sick.

Everyone gets sick. The young, the old, the rich and the poor it’s just the way of life. I never really gave it a second thought until my daughter caught a chest infection.

This was a normal thing for her, she has a weak immune system and got every cough, cold and sickness going around. I had learned to live with it up until she was about 18months she caught her usual chest infection, back on the antibiotics again.

She couldn’t go to nursery because she was not on them for long enough so my friend had her for the day while I went to my FIRST DAY back at work. I was so excited but so scared to leave her.

The day went brilliant, I rang my friend on my lunch break and everything was fine. I then finish work at 5, to 10missed calls and a lot of texts and a video of my baby girl helplessly laying on the sofa. My daughter had been rushed into hospital because she had a raging temperature and was having a febrile convulsion.

I went straight to hospital obviously but what I didn’t do was prepare myself for what I was about to see. My beautiful little girl laying on the bed with tubes coming out from her. She was not breathing on her own, she just laid there, still with nothing but a nappy on.

Nothing would ever prepare me for that moment, I crashed to the floor and just cried. I just wanted to cuddle her and tell her that I loved her so much and I was sorry I wasn’t there. So much was going through my mind, I was blaming myself for everything. Why did I go to work? Why did I leave her?

What sort of mother leaves their sick child? I couldn’t answer these questions, even to this day I can’t. I just wanted a better life for my daughter, a life I dreamed of and never got.

A long 12hours passed and she started to breathe on her own, she woke up! She was groggy and just wanted the tubes and everything out but she was breathing! A few days had passed and she was getting stronger and stronger, eating well and keeping food down.

The next day she was allowed home! A few months passed and she got tonsillitis, I have never been so scared in my life. More convulsions and more hospital trips. This happened for a few years. No matter what I did to keep her temperature down when she had a infection, nothing worked.

I asked her to be tested for epilepsy but they wouldn’t allow it because she would only have these convulsions when she had some sort of infection and a high temperature. She is now nearly 7 and has not had a convulsion since October 2016. Even though it has been nearly 4years I still get scared when she gets sick.

Credit Vickii Mallett