A BABY boy was left fighting to stay alive in hospital after being found "unresponsive and lifeless" at home by his mum.
Little Carter developed mottled skin, was pale and started crying more than normal after his eight-week jabs.
Mum Rachel could "instinctively" tell something wasn't quite right, so took the youngster to Royal United Hospital (RUH) in Bath, Somerset.
"He was seen in A&E but they told me that his symptoms were due to the vaccinations and we were sent home," she said.
The next day, Carter's condition worsened so Rachel took him back to RUH.
The newborn was kept overnight for observation before being discharged the following morning.
Again, doctors were convinced he was having a standard reaction to the 6-in-1, rotavirus and MenB vaccines - all given at eight weeks.
However, the next day, Rachel found her little boy "unresponsive and lifeless".
"I took him to another local hospital before he was transferred back to RUH, where a doctor could immediately tell that something was out of the ordinary," she said.
"He was with another child in a different room and I saw him rip off his PPE and come straight into ours, running right over to Carter.
"There was no waiting around; you could tell that it was an emergency.
"He did a few checks – I think he listened to his heart through a stethoscope, and then looked at his numbers - and then he turned around and he said, 'Your baby is very, very sick'.
"He told me that within a minute, nurses would come in and that they would need to take Carter away."
The medic listed all the life-saving tests and procedures the little one would need, and then terrified Rachel even further.
"He then said, 'I'm a very, very happy doctor, but when I'm serious, I'm serious'," she added.
"He told me, 'You need to let people take your baby. We're going to take him into another room but you have to stay here. We will bring him back'.
"Suddenly all of these nurses came in, picked Carter up and just took him away.
"Those few minutes were just the longest minutes of my life.";
Instead of wee coming out as it should, it was flowing back into his kidneys
Rachel
Rachel begged staff to "please look after him", then faced another agonising wait.
"It was awful," she said. "They took him away, did a lumbar puncture, and the doctor came in and said that even just by looking at him his diagnosis was sepsis.
"And when the results came back he was right – Carter had sepsis."
Carter, who had his jabs on January 28, 2021, was admitted to the ward for a week while doctors tried to stabilise him.
"Those first few nights were just the worst," Rachel said.
"They couldn’t settle his temperature and I remember saying, ‘Is he going to be okay?’, and they just turned around and said, ‘We’ll do everything we can.’
"They couldn’t even tell me at that stage whether he would be okay. It was horrific."
Tests over the following days revealed Carter had E. coli in his blood and the tube from his kidney to his bladder was too wide.
"Instead of wee coming out as it should, it was flowing back into his kidneys," Rachel said.
Carter took antibiotics for the next six months, which has weakened his immune system, and he has been diagnosed with type 1 diabetes.
But thankfully, he is now doing much better.
"He does catch a lot of viruses and he's had tonsillitis multiple times but he's doing well," Rachel said.
"I’m very careful who he’s around, very careful – kind of trusting my instincts.
"Whenever he goes into a hospital, I listen to myself, to my opinion, before any doctor.
"If it wasn’t for that one certain doctor that diagnosed him with sepsis, he wouldn’t be here today. Thank goodness for him.
"If I hadn’t trusted myself though, he would not be here today."
She is urging other parents to learn the tell-tale signs of sepsis to help catch it before it's too late.
Sepsis happens when the body attacks itself in reaction to an infection, like a urinary tract infection (UTI) or pneumonia.
The most common symptoms are loss of consciousness, breathlessness, a fever, slurred speech, pale, clammy or mottled skin, a fast heartbeat and a weak or high-pitched cry.
It can lead to tissue damage, organ failure, and death.
Globally, one third of people who develop sepsis die, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
It claims more lives in the UK every year than breast, bowel and prostate cancer combined.
And many who do survive are left with life-changing effects, such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), chronic pain and fatigue, organ dysfunction, and amputations.
Like strokes or heart attacks, sepsis is a medical emergency that requires rapid diagnosis and treatment.
SEPSIS is a life-threatening reaction to an infection that happens when your immune system overreacts and starts to damage your body's own tissues and organs.
Symptoms of sepsis in an adult include:
Symptoms in a child include:
They may not have all these symptoms.
If you think you or someone else has symptoms of sepsis, call 999 or go to A&E.
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Rachel said: "It is possible that Carter may have had a temperature before his vaccines, but he spiked a fever by the evening after the jabs and developed mottled skin and was crying and pale – what I know now are some of the classic symptoms of sepsis in babies and small children.
"No one knows about sepsis. If you look at TikTok at the moment people are asking, ‘What are the symptoms?’ ‘What can we look out for?’
"I’m thinking, this is one of the number one killers. How do we not know about it? It’s just madness."
But the mum, who says there is no suggestion the safe vaccines caused Carter's condition, is also keen to let families know that there can be life after sepsis.
"I see how happy Carter is now, he's thriving," she said.
"We were lucky. I always say he is my little sepsis warrior."
Speaking during Sepsis Awareness Month, Dr Andrew Conway Morris, from charity Sepsis Research FEAT, said "Sepsis takes more lives in the UK every year than breast, bowel and prostate cancer combined - that’s circa 250,000 cases per year, or roughly one every twelve minutes.
"It can be incredibly difficult to diagnose due to its symptoms overlapping with those of other common illnesses.
"That's why it's so crucial for individuals to be aware of the signs and symptoms of sepsis and to seek medical attention immediately if they feel unwell, even if they have already sought care and were sent home.
"Rachel’s story firstly illustrates clearly how important it is for parents to trust their instincts when it comes to illness in their children.
"After just eight weeks, Rachel already knew that what she was seeing in her baby son didn’t feel right and she pushed to get him the help he needed – even though this meant repeat visits to hospital over several days.
"Sepsis remains a notoriously difficult condition to diagnose.
"One reason for this is that there often appears to be a very small window of opportunity, when the standard symptoms of an infection deteriorate to become those of sepsis, and a patient’s condition can then decline very rapidly from there.
"As a charity, Sepsis Research FEAT would always advocate that patients or those accompanying them to hospital remain vigilant if they are initially sent home, and that they have the confidence to re-present urgently to A&E if they see a further deterioration after initial discharge, asking the question, ‘Could this be sepsis?’"
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