She thought her little girl had a harmless eye problem. Myopia? Slight fatigue? She didn’t know, but was far from suspecting that the situation was so serious. Things deteriorated very quickly.
That day, after playing all afternoon in an outdoor play area, explains the DailyMail, six-year-old Ottilie Atkins felt ill. She told her mum, Holly, 34, that her vision was becoming blurry and her eyes were gradually stopping working. Holly recounted the scene: “She was very pale and said, ‘I’m really dizzy.’ She had a clammy feeling, like she was sweating and cold. (…) I thought maybe she had run too much, that maybe she had gotten exhausted and that she was a little hot because it was inside. She sat and ate sandwiches. She started to get some color back, but she kept saying she felt very dizzy. »
She directly chose to take her daughter to the hospital
In the afternoon, Ottilie’s condition deteriorated sharply. “She was looking forward with one eye and it looked like the other eye was almost rolling freely, it was really horrible to see”explains his mother. Holly took her to the emergency room at Watford General Hospital, England.
Arriving at the institution, the little girl was directly taken care of by specialists. She stayed there for three weeks. Numerous examinations have been carried out. These specialists eventually diagnosed a potentially fatal stroke. It apparently occurred following a “reactivation” of the chickenpox from which the little one had suffered 18 months earlier. As the newspaper notes, the infection apparently caused swelling in the brain, which caused the stroke. What happened is very rare. It is only in one or two cases of chickenpox in a thousand that the virus causes this kind of reaction.
The child’s mother gives news
Traumatized by what happened, Ottilie’s mother does not sit idly by. She signed up for a 31km run in December to raise money for the Great Ormond Street Hospital children’s charity, which helped her daughter.
As soon as she has the opportunity, she shares her testimony in order to promote prevention. She also shared news about Ottilie: “His eyesight is still affected. She gradually improved, but we don’t know when she might stop improving or if she would improve completely. »
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