awareness

Ten Things I Hate About You

Posted on by Bluemama

Before we were introduced, I hadn’t really had any real drama in my life. The biggest thing I had to worry about was what we were going to have for tea, or whether I’d overindulged too much to fit into that dress at the weekend. And then you came along, and everything changed. Everything. And even when we met, i didn’t appreciate the impact you would have on my life, and everyone in it. Because what at first seemed like something that would have an effect on just one of my family, very soon demonstrated that it’s effects were more far-reaching than the immediate victim. Your tentacles reached across to touch all of my dear little family, and slithered into every part of my life. And whilst I try hard not to forget the good that came from meeting you, I refuse to accept that you gave those gifts to me. You did not effect those positive changes – those changes came from the strength that I managed to produce in spite of you, not because of you. And so let me tell you, Kawasaki Disease, all the things I hate about you.

I hate that you stole perfect from me. Because that is what you did. You stole the most perfect joy I had ever felt in my life up to the point that my daughter was born. When I look back now to those blissful weeks with my newborn baby, they are over-shadowed by the unseen threat of you. When I look at the few photographs I have of those precious weeks, I can recall the pure contentment that I felt whilst I drank in every inch of my perfect little girl. But there’s something else now when I look back as I find myself searching for signs of your appearance; how long had you been lurking, waiting to make your presence felt? Days? Weeks? Not months, as you made your entrance when Freya was just 7 weeks old, and took my perfect from me before I had even had the chance to accept that this was my life. I hate you for that.

I hate you for the damage that you caused, to my little girls heart and my own. Your physical attack on my daughters body caused damage that has since repaired to spite you, though we will never know what lies around the corner as you sneer at us from afar. The effects of the emotional and psychological onslaught that you raged upon me went far deeper than any physical impact you created. Far deeper and perhaps more permanent still. Anxiety is one of the gifts you bestowed upon me, and sadly you declined to accept returns.

I hate that you took me away from my family, particularly my son. I hate that your presence resulted in my absence and caused a fissure in relationships that, theee years on, we are still fighting to mend. I hate that you created mistrust in me, from those who trusted me the most, because my attempts to protect them from what you were doing to our little Freya were seen as dishonest and insincere. Because of you my children learned that sometimes parents lie. And you can sugar coat it as a white lie if you want to, but to a boy of 5 who is just adjusting to not being the most important one any more, a lie is a lie. You have no idea how much damage that has done to a vulnerable little boy who trusted his mother the most in the whole wide world. For that, I will always hate you.

I hate that you made me afraid. Afraid of life, afraid of death. Your ego will tell you that you taught me not to take life for granted, and maybe there is some merit in that. But you took away my innocent enjoyment of a life and replaced it with a life where I am constantly looking over my shoulder, wondering when time may run out for me or any member of my family. You can tell yourself that the fear of losing them has made me love them more, and that might be a little true, but mostly that fear has made me edgy and anxious and sad, and those feelings threaten any chance I had at savouring every uncertain second that we have on this Earth. I hate that you gave me that.

I hate that you show up, mess up and leave. The lucky ones manage to avoid any long term damage you try to cause, but there are still so many who are permanently impacted by your arrival. Less lucky ones might face an uncertain future with broken hearts, but at least they get a life.

But worse than that, you are too often allowed to take a life too young to be taken, and for that I hate you. I hate that we don’t know who you are, what you are, where you come from, or how to get rid of you. You are not welcome, and yet you show up anyway. The lives that you rudely interrupt are forever changed by you, but you don’t change. You just move onto your next victim, sending another family into turmoil and uncertainty and fear. I hate that we haven’t stopped you yet.

An Uncertain Future

Posted on by Bluemama

I guess we all have one of those don’t we – not many of us know what lies ahead of us.  Some know what might be in their path, but nobody knows exactly how or when those things will happen. That’s why it is important to live life, not take things for granted, and do your very best to be the best you can be. And all the other clichés about living life to the full that might seem flippant, but are actually really true.

But how many people lose sleep worrying about what might lie ahead in our futures? People with anxiety, sure.  Anxiety makes you worry about almost everything.  I imagine the majority of people think about their future, but worrying about what might happen next year, in five years, in twenty years… I don’t think that is common.  Amongst the rare disease community uncertain futures are a given.  Many people living with rare diseases don’t have a diagnosis for their ailments and spend years searching for answers and fighting for treatment.  Some have a diagnosis, even treatment, but have no idea how their lives might take shape with the disease they are living with.  Kawasaki Disease is one of those.

Take Freya.  I think most people think that she is okay now.  She had this disease that made her really sick, but she got treatment and now she is at home living a ‘normal’ life and looks perfectly healthy, like any other kid her age.  And in the most part that would be true, except for the ‘normal’ part.  You see, if you weren’t already aware from my previous blog posts, Freya was one of the 6% of children with Kawasaki Disease who sustained damage to her heart despite treatment.  The disease causes inflammation of the small to medium arteries throughout the child’s body, and if treated quickly enough heart damage can be prevented.  In those cases where treatment is delayed, due to misdiagnosis (or a lack of diagnosis altogether) Kawasaki Disease is allowed to continue on its destructive path and cause damage that may never be reversed.  Once an aneurysm forms, the child’s heart will never be ‘normal’ again, even if the coronary arteries remodel and aneurysms regress to within otherwise normal parameters.  This leads to complications throughout the child’s life and into adulthood, which is why long-term care and life-long follow up are so vitally important.

The good news in Freya’s case is that her arteries have remodelled quite dramatically from when she was at her most sick.  There are no obvious aneurysms any more, and the arteries that had expanded to over 5 times the normal size for a baby of her age, have now regressed to what would be considered normal in a child that hadn’t been touched by heart disease.  The bad news is that the extent of the remodelling has her Cardiologist feeling a bit anxious.  They are concerned with what might be causing the narrowing of her arteries, and whether that narrowing might continue to progress until Freya’s arteries are too narrow to allow the flow of blood.  When blood can’t get around your heart, that’s when a heart attack occurs.  Sure, Freya takes aspirin every day to try and help keep the blood flowing, but nothing can get through an occluded artery.

That said, do I think that she is at immediate or short-term risk of a heart attack? Hesitantly I say ‘No’.  I say it hesitantly because whilst I have this pretty good feeling that Freya might just be some kind of miracle success story, my experience with this disease is not to let your guard down.  Complacency has no place where this disease is concerned.  Let’s say that I hope that she is not at immediate risk.  We will find out more in the Autumn when Freya will undergo the cardiac catheter angiogram that she was meant to be having last year.  It has been delayed to allow her more time to grow, so that she might be stronger to outweigh some of the risks associated with the procedure.  The rapid remodelling of her arteries has led me in the meantime to insist that Freya receives regular follow up between now and then so that we don’t miss something while we wait.  An echocardiogram won’t show what is happening with the arterial walls, but you can see the diameter of the arteries (up to a point – an echo can only see about 3mm into the artery) so you can get a view of whether they are continuing to narrow.

So what are my fears for Freya’s future?  

Of course I am anxious about the angiogram, but I’ll worry about that more when the time comes around.  I am confident in the ability of the intervention cardiologist, and am happy that it is a relatively low risk procedure.  I’m not too excited about her going under a general anaesthetic – I’ve seen that once before and it felt like I was watching my baby die.  I would prefer never to see that again, but that’s the reality and I will always be there by her side when she goes to sleep, no matter how hard I find it.

I am anxious about what is going on in that heart.  I’d love to have a window to look through so we could check in on it every now and again.  We assume from outward appearances and general health that nothing too sinister is going on, but the fact is we just don’t know.  I’ve read many stories from other KD parents who have experienced dramatic turns of events with their children, resulting in the need for heart surgery.  Sadly, some children have lost their lives to this disease – mostly those that were not diagnosed in time, or at all, but often because the changes in their hearts happened quickly and in spite of regular follow up and treatment.  Nothing is promised.  Do I spend every day worrying that Freya will have a heart attack? No.  Does my heart leap into my throat when I wake in the night and can’t hear her breathing on the baby monitor? Every time.

I am worried about what the angiogram might find, and whether there is any likelihood of Freya needing surgery in the future – around 80% of children who suffer giant coronary aneurysms will require intervention later in life, whether it be a stent or bypass surgery, for example.

I am worried about whether Freya’s diet is sufficiently ‘heart-healthy’ to protect her heart from disease.

I think about when Freya might decide to have children of her own.  Seems like a long way off to be worrying about it, but the truth is that she will most likely need to have a cardiologist involved in her ante-natal care.  There have been cases of heart attacks during labour where the mother had KD in childhood – there’s a whole medical paper dedicated to this subject (yes, I have a copy!).  I even worry about whether I will still be here when she enters that stage in her life and whether she will remember that she needs to consider her medical history.

And this one you might think of as really strange, but I worry about them telling me everything is ok, and that she can stop the medication and live a normal life, with KD firmly in her past.  You would think that should be something I would hope for, and be pleased about.  But, first of all, I will never forget the words of Professor Jane Burns, World Leading Kawasaki Disease specialist, that once a child’s heart has been damaged by KD it is never considered healed, or normal again.  So if  a doctor tells me everything is normal, and tries to send us on our way, then I will be putting up a pretty big fight!  Freya, and all the other children like her, need to be monitored for the rest of their lives.  Rady Children’s Hospital recommend obtaining a CT calcium score 10 years post-diagnosis to help identify and prevent further complications, for example.  It may just be a check-up once a year to make sure there have been no changes over time, but it is the peace of mind that we all need to ensure that there are no hidden issues lurking that might cause a serious problem later on.  Complacency is a killer.

“Oh Jo, you’re so dramatic!” I hear you say.  But you need to understand that I read stories, comments and messages every single day from someone who has been touched by Kawasaki Disease and suffered terrible consequences and devastating loss.  Every time I feel like I will never make a difference where KD is concerned, I remind myself of those stories, or I stumble across a new member of the Kawasaki community and the fire in my belly is reignited.  It is one such story that got me thinking again about the future, and reminded me that although I can hope for positive change in Freya’s condition, I must never allow my own complacency, or that of the medical profession, to create a false sense of security.  The story is that of Lisa Connelly. Her sister Amy has given me permission to share it in the hope that it might help to raise awareness of this disease and the devastating consequences when we get it wrong.

Lisa Connelly was diagnosed with Kawasaki Disease at the age of three.  By age five she had been given the all clear, following an angiogram that showed no persistent damage to her coronary arteries.  I can only imagine the elation of the family as they put KD firmly in the past, and watched Lisa to grow and live a normal, heathy life.  She was very active growing up, and was an avid runner.  She had a beautiful son, Levi, and was very much loved by her family and friends.  Described as “the kind of person you want to be like”, she had a heart of gold and was the first to come to your aid if you were in need.

Out of the blue, on the 25th November 2015, 37-year old Lisa had symptoms of a heart attack. The hospital performed an echocardiogram and Lisa underwent a stress test, both of which cleared her of any issues. Four days later, on November 29th 2015, Lisa passed away as a result of a massive heart attack.

The pathology report on Lisa’s heart showed that her coronary arteries had muscle cell tissue build up on the arterial walls, which caused restriction of blood flow to her heart, thus causing a heart attack.  The family had no idea that Lisa would ever have to deal with Kawasaki disease again, and even after the heart attack they did not consider it might be linked to an illness that she had when she was a child.

Since Lisa’s passing, her sister Amy has done everything she can to raise funds and awareness to prevent another tragedy like this.  Professor Jane Burns has said that conducting a CT calcium test earlier in Lisa’s life may have prevented further complications from occurring.  It was from a Facebook post sharing a medical paper which discusses the importance of a CT Calcium Score that I found Amy, and I am honoured that she has allowed me to share her family’s story in my blog.

Amy said:

“My sister was truly a beautiful light in this world. My sister had a great smile and loved to see others smile. She helped so many people while she was living and we know she continues to help even today.  Our hope is that somehow she helps in the research efforts of KD. So, my prayer is that your blog post reaches someone that takes the information and gets the proper treatment they need to live a long, healthy and hopefully happy life. We’re making beauty from ashes…My mom and dad’s grief has been almost unbearable this past year. And the hardest part for my mom is that the cause of the heart attack was from KD.” 

As well as raising awareness of the devastating consequences of this disease, Lisa’s family have made sure that her legacy lives on, and donated some of her heart tissue samples to Dr. Jane Burns and Dr. Anne Rowley, leading KD experts in the US. Lisa’s organs have also helped to save the lives of four people, and the family are in touch with the gentleman who received her liver.

I know how important it has been to me to make sure that Freya didn’t suffer this awful disease in vain.  We still have our daughter here with us, and thanks to the awareness that Amy is continuing to raise about the potential long-term and hidden consequences of Kawasaki Disease, we can hope that Freya will long outlive us.  I don’t know if I would have had the strength to fight had the unimaginable happened in the Summer of 2015.  As we were starting to get our lives back on track that year, a family was being torn apart by the loss of a truly beautiful person.  I join Amy in their hope that this story might reinforce the need to ensure that Kawasaki Disease survivors are given appropriate attention from the medical profession throughout their lives, and shines a bright light on the insidious nature of Kawasaki Disease.

Writing this, I felt my heart break all over again.  This is Lisa.

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On why I might once have been angry…

Posted on by Bluemama

I had a conversation recently with a Paediatrician at our local hospital, who whilst discussing a current medical issue brought up that he was concerned that he had heard that I was angry at the hospital for failing to diagnose my daughter when she became sick in the early Summer of 2015.  He mentioned that I had taken my folder with me to our last visit, and that the staff had commented that I was very angry at the time.  I am not sure when he was referring to, as our recent visit when I took the file was actually a positive experience, and I was impressed by the communication between the three hospitals involved in Freya’s care.  Yes, I took my folder with me, but I take it with me everywhere.  That folder contains the letters from every clinic appointment Freya has had in the last 18 months – Rheumatology, Cardiology, Immunology.  I take it everywhere with me in case a medical professional needed to see the history, and actually it was useful because the hospital hadn’t been copied in on the letters and took copies from me while we were there.

The fact that the doctor brought it up has been niggling me for a little while, so I thought I would try and capture why in this blog post and try to explain why a parent might act in a certain way when their child has been critically ill.

When Freya became sick in May 2015, she was immediately admitted to hospital and her condition very quickly deteriorated.  Within hours of being admitted, she went into septic shock. When the first doctor who saw her decline started to take action, I felt like she was in good hands.  They moved swiftly but calmly as they got her into the High Dependency Unit to administer fluid resuscitation.  I remember the Consultant giving out instructions to the doctor and the nurses in the room, and they responded quickly, without any alarm.  I could feel the tension in the room, and I watched through the bars at the end of the cot in quiet disbelief at what was happening in front of my eyes.  But I watched in awe, not really knowing what they were doing, but feeling that it was right, whatever it was.

For 6 days, Freya was treated with a number of antibiotics.  The main suspect was meningitis, but she was too sick and weak to have a lumbar puncture to diagnose it.  During that first week, Freya displayed a fever that would not abate with the usual paracetamol and ibuprofen combination.  She had sore, red, cracked lips – with hindsight that was a symptom of Kawasaki Disease, but it was attributed to dehydration at that time.  She developed a rash all over her body, but in the first week that would disappear almost as quickly as it came.  Her hands and feet looked puffy and swollen, another symptom of Kawasaki Disease, but with KD being so far from everyone’s minds with her being such a tiny baby, it was put down to swelling at the cannula sites.  Numerous blood tests were taken in an attempt to identify whatever it was that was making Freya so sick, but nothing except the common cold virus (Rhinovirus) would show up in that first week.  That wasn’t enough to make my little girl so very poorly.  A lumbar puncture on day 6 would be inconclusive – elevated white blood cells, but no definitive sign of meningitis.  Perhaps the cocktail of different antibiotics delivered intravenously in that week had dealt with it? So why wasn’t she getting any better?

Apart from one locum doctor who visited Freya in the HDU and suggested we stop all the medication rather than find a new cannula site (I know, right?!), every nurse and doctor that took care of Freya in our local hospital was fantastic.  Not only did they take care of Freya, but they took time to take care of me too.  They treated Freya as if she were one of their own children, and they showed an interest in me, listened to me and showed me nothing but respect.  Some of the faces I can’t even remember, but there are a few that stand out and are etched in my memory, even if I can’t remember all their names.  There were moments too, that I’ll not forget. The time that one of the senior nurses removed all of the equipment from the room so that we could allow my other children to visit without frightening them, that was a highlight.

I hope that the nursing staff know how much I appreciated how they took care of Freya.  If I had any complaints at all they were tiny – it bothered me that the syringe packaging was sometimes left at the end of Freya’s cot.  It didn’t cause anyone any harm, just paper and plastic, but it made me feel bad because her cot wasn’t a dustbin.  The time the heart monitor failed in the night and they replaced it, but left the broken one at the foot of the cot; it was my baby’s bed, and although she took up very little room in it, I didn’t want those things left discarded like it didn’t matter.  And that’s it really, my only criticism.  And I know it might sound petty to share, but I hope that any nurses reading might think about how such a small oversight even when they’re obviously run off their feet, could make a new mother feel when she has too much time to think.

Even though the first hospital failed to reach a confirmed diagnosis, I do not feel anger towards them.  It is easy for me to sit here now and say that Freya’s symptoms were clearly indicative of Kawasaki Disease, but hindsight is indeed a wonderful thing, and I don’t know that they could have done anything differently.  In fact the Paediatrician said that he could understand my anger had Freya been diagnosed within hours of her transfer to the children’s hospital, but it took them a further week to diagnose her, so it was clearly not an easy undertaking.  I said that they had looked for KD on the first day in the new hospital and he said that was right, because it was he who had suggested that was what they should look for.  And now it makes sense why when they told us they were moving Freya, that they mentioned a heart scan.  I thought it was just a routine thing, but clearly they had a suspicion that needed to be confirmed outside of their own local facilities.  And that’s probably my one and only criticism of the doctors of our local hospital –  I wish they had told me what they were considering.  The problem is I never really asked them what they were looking for.  I was naive.  I thought they could just take her blood, plug the results in and hey presto! technology would have the answer.  So I let them do their work, and didn’t ask a thing.  The only question I wanted answering was one that I didn’t have the courage to ask.  I gave that task to my husband; is she going to die?

Had the doctors mentioned Kawasaki Disease, would it have changed anything? Well, you know that is a question that has haunted me since Freya’s diagnosis.  My instincts tell me that I would have read about the disease and asked more questions.  I would have asked the most important question of all, “Why isn’t it Kawasaki Disease?” And when they told me she didn’t have some of the symptoms I would have cried, “Yes! Yes she does, see?!”  They would have reached a diagnosis and given Freya the treatment on day 8, not day 13 when the damage had already been done.  We would have left the hospital, emotionally bruised, but with a child that had been very ill but was now well.  And we would have gone back to our normal lives…

The reality isn’t quite so straightforward.  Would I really have come to the conclusion that the doctors couldn’t, simply by reading what I could find on Google? I have heard of cases that have been diagnosed entirely because of the parent’s knowledge.  Would I have done that? Or would I have read about this obscure disease with it’s stupid motorbike name, laughed and moved on?  I guess even if I had helped them to reach a conclusion, even if they had managed to give her the treatment within that magic 10-day window, Freya was in the category with the highest risk of heart damage – a neonate, female, displaying severe symptoms which we now believe was KDSS.  When she finally got the treatment, she was resistant to both doses, and needed much more aggressive treatment to finally halt the path of the disease.  Maybe she was biologically destined to be one of the unlucky ones?

That said, I wish the doctors had told me about Kawasaki Disease.  It might not have come as so much of a shock when it was finally diagnosed, I might have been better prepared.  The Children’s Hospital decided not to mention it too – had they told me that was what they were looking for when they did the first echocardiogram on day 9 which showed them a reasonably healthy heart (a small murmur) and led them to rule it out as a prime suspect, perhaps I would have reminded them of the symptoms they hadn’t seen for themselves the previous week when we were at the local hospital?  And perhaps I would have had more respect for the doctors in the first week had I known that they suspected it first, but weren’t in a position to confirm it.  That’s why they moved Freya.  They wanted the Children’s Hospital to confirm or deny their hunch.  The Children’s Hospital did an echo and the results lead them to turn their investigations elsewhere.

I felt angry about that for a long time, in fact I’m not sure if a part of me is still angry.  I was initially angry at the local hospital for not getting it in that first week. Let’s face it, when we finally got the diagnosis and learned that Freya’s heart had sustained permanent damage, we were angry at the whole bloody world.  Now I know that the local hospital had KD on their radar, I feel less angry.  I only wished they’d told me.  So how do I feel about the Children’s Hospital?

Much like my experience locally, I met some really fantastic nurses during our stay.  In fact in all three hospitals (Freya would be moved to a Cardiac Unit in another hospital upon diagnosis) we met some of kindest, most caring people I have ever had the pleasure to meet.  I guess that’s why they do the job that they do.  It was a much busier hospital, so there was less time for chit-chat and the nurses seemed run off their feet moving from patient to patient to carry out observations and deliver medication. We were in a private room with Freya so were quite out of the way, which was isolating at times.  There were a couple of issues with medication – an oversight that meant she nearly didn’t get the second half of the drug that was meant to be saving her life and was only pointed out by me when I awoke to see there was no IV going in; that was a big one.  A lot of the time I felt like we were more of a number than we had felt at the previous hospital, but I’ll play Devil’s advocate that they were just so busy.  The majority of the nursing staff were wonderful, especially with Freya, which is what matters.  The nurses that came to talk to me in the night when I lay there crying on the foldaway bed, those that rocked Freya to sleep when I didn’t have the energy or the heart, they’re the ones that have stayed with me since our ordeal.  The actions of the nurse who accompanied us on a transfer to the cardiac unit when the ambulance didn’t arrive to return us until well after her shift will never be forgotten.  She saw it as her absolute duty to care for Freya and made arrangements to ensure that Freya’s medication and observations were carried out in that delay.  She had finished her shift hours before and had her own child to get back to, but all she could think about was keeping Freya safe – it distressed and frustrated her that she was unable to care for her patient, and she did something about it.

The Doctor’s at the Children’s Hospital were always around, either popping in to check on Freya, discuss possibilities.  They always seemed to be busy looking at the files, searching for answers and I don’t doubt that they lost many winks of sleep trying to work out why this beautiful little girl wasn’t getting any better.  I didn’t know until way after her diagnosis that KD had been considered and ruled out.  I wish they had told me at the start.  But again, maybe it wouldn’t have changed anything.  I would like to ask them now why they didn’t think it could be KD, and not just because the first echo was clear – you can’t diagnose KD from an echo.  They believed that Freya’s only symptoms were the fever and a rash.  I believe that her cracked, red lips and the swollen hands and feet were also symptoms – enough symptoms to confirm a diagnosis.  Had they understood more about the disease, might they have also known that whilst KD is very uncommon in young babies, young babies are more likely to suffer from Kawasaki Disease Shock Syndrome? Had they considered that, might they have realised that whilst thrombocytopenia (low platelet count) is not a common symptom in KD (in fact is is usually very high), it is a characteristic of KDSS?  Might they have looked back over the previous week and seen that everything about her was synonymous with a KDSS diagnosis?

Perhaps my expectations of them are too high – they cannot possibly know every single childhood ailment in detail.  There are over 7000 rare diseases in this world and KD is just one of them.  Some doctors won’t ever have seen a case in their career.  They spend most of their career dealing with ‘horses’ and are not on the look out for the odd zebra that might turn up.  Is it only hindsight that allows me to see now what they couldn’t then?  I do know that they have learned from Freya, that she has taught them a lot about the disease.  I do know that they are less likely to make the same ‘mistakes’ again.  Again, I just wish they had told me what they were looking for, and why it couldn’t be Kawasaki Disease.  Because when they ruled it out, for whatever reason, no matter how unusual Freya was, they got it wrong.  They got it wrong, and I will never know if that decision was responsible for the damage that KD did to her little heart.  I cannot change the past, though, and so I have to be thankful for the doctor who came to see her when the rash appeared on day 12 and suggested she be sent for another echo.  That echo showed the damage that confirmed it had to be Kawasaki Disease.  That doctor may just be responsible for saving Freya’s life.

So let me get back to the point of me writing this blog.  I guess I wanted people to understand that I may well have been angry at times, but that my anger does not mean that I do not appreciate everything that all those medical professionals did and have continued to do in taking care of my daughter.  At the time I wanted someone to blame for breaking Freya’s heart. And mine.  I was angry at life.  I was angry at a God that I’m not even sure I believe in.  I know now that no amount of anger or blame was going to change anything, but it is one of the stages of grief.  I could not believe that I had taken my perfectly healthy child to hospital with what looked like a virus, and took her home with a heart condition.  That had to be someone’s fault, didn’t it?  Who knows.  Nothing is going to change.

Do I think that a diagnosis might have been reached sooner? Yes, I do.  Do I wish that they had asked me what I thought, told me about Kawasaki Disease and asked me if I could think of anything that they might have missed? Absolutely.  Do I consider myself lucky that Freya fell ill on a Sunday at 7 weeks old and was therefore too much of a risk to leave to chance? That I didn’t have to face countless appointments with GP’s who might have sent us home with the usual ‘virus’ diagnosis? Yes, yes, and yes – when Freya went into shock, she was absolutely in the right place; what if that had happened at home?  Do I thank my lucky stars that regardless of all that anger and confusion, regardless of whether it was ‘too late’ or not, that the right doctor walked in at the right moment on the right day and helped them to reach the right decision? Yes, a million times yes.

I have found peace with that part of our journey now.  I am just grateful that Freya was strong enough to fight, and that she is here, bold and bright and beautiful.  I used to refer to her as ‘damaged’, ‘broken’.  I don’t see her that way anymore.  The hidden faults within her heart are no longer what defines her for me.  And whilst I can’t change the path that we have been down, I can make a difference to the future of Kawasaki Disease by sharing our experience and never giving up when it comes to raising awareness.

I hope you will continue to support us.

www.bluemama.co.uk          www.facebook.com/freyasstory              Or Tweet @freya_story 

Then and now…

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Everything changes

Posted on by Bluemama

I have just returned home from handing back all my equipment to my employer as I embark on this new chapter in my life.  Funny how strange it felt handing back a laptop and a mobile phone that have only been locked away in the garage for the last year anyway.  I guess it felt somewhat symbolic of the final step towards (temporary) detachment from my career.  And just being there in the restaurant, drinking coffee like I used to every morning when I was there, felt quite surreal.  More so, because I had you by my side, and a rice cake in my hand instead of a notepad.  I was very aware, having just finished a year of maternity leave, that under normal circumstances I would have been there alone.  I would have been the one rushing off to that conference call, or heading off to a meeting.  I have no regrets, however. Non, je ne regrette rien.   I consider myself incredibly lucky to have the chance to take some additional time to concentrate on your immediate needs, and to regain some of the time we lost last year.  With your brother and sister I would have missed so much of what I get to see every day with you sweetheart.  Watching you develop and grow is a source of constant amazement for me, and I don’t think I will ever tire of spending time with you.

The effects of the last year were not just felt by me.  I’m sure they were felt by you, but I have no idea how because you can’t tell me yet.  I hope that you don’t remember any of it. That all you remember is how we used to go on the train for days out, or for coffee and cake and to the park.  I won’t ever forget that the backdrop for all of those things was an imposing hospital looming behind us.  But hopefully you will just remember feeding the ducks in that nice park, and you won’t have noticed the tears in my eyes that came because I was saddened by the memories that the park evoked.  One day we will be able to go to Weston Park and sit on a bench and let the warm sunlight wash over us as though it were sent right from Heaven.  We will lie on a blanket and make pictures in the clouds, feed the birds and the ducks and watch the fish in their shady hiding place under the little bridge.  But we will always make our place on the other side of that park so as to spare the mums who, like me last year, watched other families enjoying the summer through the windows of a hospital cubicle.  The nurses thought they were helping me by moving me to a room with a view. The brick wall which was our previous view had been quite oppressive, but no more so than watching mums play with their babies in the shade of the trees.

Back then I thought I did a pretty good job of protecting your brother and sister.  We told them that you had a cold but needed the nurses to help get you better because you were too young for Calpol.  It was a white lie. Quite a big one, but white nevertheless.  And you did test positive for Rhinovirus in that first week, so it seemed like a plausible excuse.  We also kept your siblings from the hospital.  They visited you on your last day at the local hospital (after a week), and then maybe once or twice when we moved to the Children’s Hospital.  We didn’t tell them when you were moved to Leeds, so they didn’t see us when I was in my darkest place.  What I didn’t know was that our attempts to protect them probably made their anxiety worse.  I underestimated Eliza.  She has told me since  that she was very worried that I would be coming home without her baby sister.  She wasn’t stupid; she knew something must be pretty wrong and that a common cold wouldn’t need her mum and sister to be away from them for as long as we were.  So she actually worried more, because she knew it had to be bad for us to want to hide it from her.  And Fin? Well he went off the rails a bit. His behaviour at school hit an all time low, and the effects of last year have only just begun to wear off with a huge amount of support from the school.  He was the baby of the family before you came along, you see.  He was excited about getting a baby sister (although I do think he might have secretly been hoping for a brother to play Minecraft with!), but suddenly not being the baby anymore is quite a lot for any child to get used to.  And then just 7 weeks after we brought you home, just as he was probably getting used to you being around, he lost you and me for a while.  6 weeks.  That’s a long time in a 5-year old’s life.  Because we played down your illness so much, he couldn’t understand why his Mum would leave him.  He thought that I had chosen you over him, and his little head wasn’t quite ready to work that one out.  His self-esteem took a huge knock, and he became very insecure for a while.  No need to feel any guilt about that though, not you or I.  I made the decision to protect them for all the right reasons and I wasn’t ready to tell them that they might lose their little sister.  They didn’t need that worry.  And by the time you read this, you will have seen that none of this had a lasting effect on them; they probably won’t even remember it when you’re old enough to be reading this.

I am not the same person that I was before I had you.  I might even go as far as saying that you are lucky that this happened to you.  You have had the very best of me this last year, and I dare say  that you will continue to get the best of me for as long as we are both here.  I have not taken a single moment with you for granted, and because of that I think I am more patient with you than I might have been with the others. I am most definitely more intuitive about your needs. Perhaps some of  that is due to age (I was 40 when I had you), or experience with having done it twice before.  But I think most of it is the incredible bond that we have developed by spending so much time together since you came into the world.  Because I am scared of you getting very poorly again (I’ll tell you one day about chicken pox and the medication that you take), I have kept you away from large groups of children in the main.  I don’t take you to baby and toddler groups or play areas where the risk of infection is a constant worry for me.  I don’t wrap you up in cotton wool either – rather than avoid all situations, I tend to weigh up the situation based on my anxieties and I guess you could call it damage limitation, rather than complete avoidance.  That will become easier towards the end of this year (2016) when you have received the MMR, Chicken Pox and Flu vaccines.  Until then, we will stay together in our little bubble where we see just the right amount of people to allow you to build relationships with other children, but not enough for me to worry about you becoming sick.  I know I cannot protect you from everything, but I have to protect you from what I see as a risk, no matter how small that risk might be.  I cannot bear the thought of seeing you that sick again, Peanut.

My social circle is a little smaller than it used to be too.  There are lots of reasons for that. I’ve become very immersed in a Kawabubble over the last year and I don’t have an awful lot of time and energy for much else.  Most of my attention is on you, and getting you through the next challenges that the effects of KD will throw at us.  A lot of my attention has turned to our little family; this experience has made my family much more important to me than I think I allowed it to be before.  It’s also very difficult for me to spend time with people who cannot relate to our situation.  I don’t want constant sympathy, but I want compassion and understanding.  People that think that everything is ok now because I wear a big smile, and you look so amazing, don’t know me very well.  They don’t know how much I still struggle to come to terms with what has happened to you, and what the impact of the disease will have on your future.  70% of children in your situation will have to have invasive treatment later in life – a heart bypass, or a stent perhaps.  100% of children who have suffered coronary aneurysms as a result of KD will suffer myocarditis (inflammation of the heart muscle) which causes degeneration or death of heart muscle cells.  I don’t know how to compute the possibility that my child may show symptoms of myocardial infarction (a heart attack).  Just doesn’t seem real.  Later this year, whether it be through cardiac catheter angiogram or CT angiogram, we should get a closer look at the cause of the remodelling of your coronaries to better understand what the future may hold.  Right now I have to take the cues from your outward appearance and development, and you look mighty fine to me.  It’s very confusing though.  I’m still not sure if there is any chance that you could have complications today, tomorrow, next week.  I guess we have to take each day as it comes.

I don’t want people to think that I am a victim in all of this.  That I don’t want to let go of it.  In fairness, I can’t let go.  Partly because you are still affected by the disease and will be for many years to come. Partly because I feel I have gained a purpose; I can help make things better for other sufferers of the disease, whether it be through raising awareness to help speed up diagnosis, or by providing useful information to other parents going through this.  Kawasaki Disease is now a very big part of my life, of our lives, and it isn’t likely to go away.  Perhaps over time it will become a smaller part of life for all of us, but I don’t think I will ever stop talking about it to anyone who will listen (and a few who don’t!).  It’s too important for that.  I am in contact with parents and grandparents who have seen this illness first hand, some who have suffered the worst consequence of all.  For them, I will always do what I can to help change the future of Kawasaki Disease.

Having a child diagnosed with a rare, or little known, disease is life-changing for parent and child.  And when there is no known cause you never stop asking yourself ‘Why?’.  Why did this happen to you? I hope we find out one day.  I believe the specialists are getting closer – it’s just that research costs money and KD research is severely underfunded.  They believe they have identified the combination of genes that make a child with KD more susceptible to the disease.  And they are pretty certain that they are looking for an infectious/toxic agent that completes the perfect KD storm.  I desire two things; that we can gain a greater understanding of your condition so we might have a better handle on what might be around the corner, and that the mystery of Kawasaki Disease is unravelled in our lifetime so we might gain some closure.  Solving that mystery will also result in a test for the disease so that children might be diagnosed more quickly, and better treatments that further improve the possible outcomes for children with the disease.

My whole perspective on life has changed.  Things I was afraid of before no longer occupy any space in my mind.  I no longer sweat the small stuff.  I have a lot more compassion for others – through our journey I have come into contact with so many parents who have suffered challenges with their children, KD or otherwise.  Before this, I was ignorant to all that – it was happening to someone else and that didn’t matter to me.  Now it does.  The only fear I have now is of losing you, or losing any of the people that I love dearly.  I will not allow people to hurt me anymore, because nothing can come close to the pain I have felt over the last year with you.  None of that matters.  Yes, everything has changed. Our lives are different than they would have been if KD hadn’t crept in.  But it’s not all bad. It’s different, but not bad.

Sometimes I am scared, often I am sad.  I worry a lot about the future for our little family.  But above all that, you will grow up knowing that you are loved and cherished more than you could ever fathom.  You are a special little girl who will achieve great things one day, and I will be there by your side with every step you take towards greatness.

I love you, Peanut. 

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Stealing Joy

Posted on by Bluemama

A year ago, on this very Saturday (though it was the 30th May), we had our last day of ‘normal’.  My parents had visited from Kent to see their new granddaughter.  Freya was 7 weeks old and we went on our first family day out since Freya was born, to a local farm.  The sun was shining; it was a glorious day that told us that summer was on the horizon.  The unexpected baby we had thought would ruin everything was proving to be our best ‘mishap’ to date. We were smugly happy with our perfect little life. We watched our older children play in the sunshine, whilst their baby sister slept in her pram, and it was like we had our own little slice of heaven right there.

That evening my husband and I went out for dinner with my parents, and my mother-in-law sat home with the children.  It was a pleasant evening, and when we returned home there was nothing to report, other than the fact that Freya hadn’t wanted all of her bedtime bottle.  It was unusual, but not exactly a serious situation; perhaps she was too tired, too full, or maybe there were some teeth on the way.

The next morning Freya would wake for her morning feed, around 6am.  Except she was so snuffly and bunged up that she just couldn’t take the bottle and gave up pretty quickly.  I was concerned, because she had gone for so long without a feed through the night (I remember celebrating our first proper night’s sleep), but I put it down to the fact that her nose was just too blocked up to let her feed.  At around 9am, I made another bottle and tried again, but just as before she couldn’t manage to take the feed, and fell asleep in my arms from the effort.  “She’ll feed when she’s hungry,” I told myself, and put her down in her bouncy chair.  A couple of hours passed, and I began to get quite fretful that she hadn’t fed since the previous day, so I decided to wake her and try again.   It was about 11am.  When I went to get her out of the chair, I noticed how hot she felt and so I took her temperature with a digital thermometer.  38.3F.  She had a fever.  I remained calm, I mean kids do get sick, and she has an older brother and sister who come into contact with all kinds of germs at school.  She had been snuffly for a couple of days; she had probably picked up a bit of a cold.  So I sent my husband to Mothercare to buy a medicine dispensing dummy (if you haven’t seen these, they are fantastic for getting medicine into a little baby).  Meanwhile I hunted out the Calpol. From 2 months.  That’s what it says on the front of the box.  Many would have given the medicine; I mean, she was only a week away from 2 months, what harm could it do? But for some reason, I felt like I couldn’t take that chance.  Unsure what to do, I called the out of hours GP service (it was a Sunday, remember).

The doctor called us back pretty quickly, and asked me to explain what symptoms Freya had.  She wasn’t feeding.  She was sleepy (but she was a newborn baby, and sleep was pretty much all she did).  She had a fever.  And come to think of it, her little tummy was moving up and down quite a bit – she was working hard at breathing.  The doctor said we should take her to A&E, as it was unusual for such a young baby to have a fever for no reason.  And that is what we did.

I’m guessing it was around 3pm in the afternoon by the time we were seen at the local hospital.   I don’t remember what was said by the nurse/doctor that checked Freya over.  I remember telling them that I had tested positive for Group B Strep during the pregnancy, and that although I was treated with IV antibiotics during labour, it was pretty tight timing wise.  I was on high alert for late onset GBS infection in Freya, and I knew that if she had contracted GBS during labour, there was a chance that she could develop meningitis.  They did too.  So they sent us up to the children’s observation unit with a view to keeping her in overnight for observation.

That part is all a bit of a blur too.  I remember sitting in the waiting area, Freya, burning up, lying across my knee.  She was laid on some paper towels whilst my husband and I attempted to catch a wee in a kidney dish. We went into a small room, and a doctor came to check her over.  I can’t remember what he said, or why he felt she should be admitted to the Children’s Ward.  I don’t remember when they put the IV antibiotics in.  I just remember that’s what happened.  We were admitted to a private room, and my husband went home to our older kids.  I sat in a chair in the corner of the room with Freya sleeping in my arms.  She was connected by the IV to a machine that dispensed the medicine, and every time I moved the machine would set off alarming, and the nurses would come in.  I think I stayed there until the medicine had all been delivered to Freya’s tiny, hot little body, and then I decided we both needed to get some proper sleep.  By this time, it was quite late.  It may even have been the early hours of the morning.  The nurses came in every hour to complete their observations, and then I put Freya in the cot so she might be cooler, and I might manage some sleep in the chair.

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As I laid her down, I noticed that all familiar smell – she had a dirty nappy.  “The poor thing just needs to sleep, I’ll not disturb her” I told myself,  and I went back to my chair in the corner.  I’m not sure how long I sat there trying to get to sleep before my conscience got the better of me and I decided that I could not leave her in a dirty nappy. Disturb her or not, I needed to change her.  And it was as I lifted her vest that I noticed a pin-prick rash over her torso that I could just make out in the dim light.  I think it was about 5am, because it was starting to get light outside and I could hear the birds singing outside of our window.  Were my eyes playing tricks on me in the half light?  I was so tired.  I turned on the light and went to get a better look, but still in the fluorescent lights I couldn’t work out what I was seeing.  I walked over to the window and opened the curtains, and in that light I could see that this wasn’t an illusion.  Freya was covered in a rash.  I called the nurse who came to have a look, and we both spent so much time scrutinising that rash that I can’t remember to this day if it blanched under a glass or not.  The nurse called the on duty doctor, and by the time he arrived (which wasn’t long at all) the rash had spread down Freya’s legs and across her arms.

It was in that moment, watching the doctor silently complete his review of my baby, that I noticed the atmosphere change.  They called a consultant who joined the doctor in his silent inspection. It was very calm, but the air felt thick. I thought Freya was sleeping.  In fact she was unresponsive.  I remember hearing words like “shutting down”, and the doctors started to wheel Freya in her cot into another room.  It was the High Dependency Unit (HDU).  They delivered fluid boluses to Freya by stealth.  At 6am I called my husband “Gavin, I think you need to come quick.”

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If you’ve followed Freya’s Story, you will know what happened next.  You’ll know that she became stable, but did not get any better for the next week, despite numerous antibiotics.  Her fever would not come down with antipyretics, and when her fever spiked (above 40 at times), so her heart rate would soar, and her oxygen levels would plummet.  She was very sick, yet it would take 13 days, lots of medication and countless tests before a diagnosis of atypical Kawasaki Disease would be reached.  Three hospitals would be responsible for her care during a six week incarceration (!) which began on the 31st May 2015.

I want to allow myself to believe all the motivational cliches about things happening for a reason, about how far we have come, about how lucky we are to have Freya here in our lives and how we should count our blessings.  But today that all feels like bullshit.  Today I find myself in mourning for normal.  I want to go back to that day at Cannon Hall Farm, where everything was blissful and beautiful and picture-book perfect, and somehow re-write history.  Today marks the anniversary of the last day we knew what normal was.  I wish that day were Groundhog Day and we could live it over and over and over so that the 31st May would never come.

I don’t want to wallow in the misery of the last year, believe me.  I want to be thankful for what we have, and cherish every moment.  I want to believe that this happened to us for a reason, that we will all be better people for it, that I will look back on all this one day and laugh at how wrapped up I was.  I will allow that to come, I’m sure (and the counsellor will give me a good kick up the arse if I don’t!), but for now I am allowing myself some wallow-time.  I have every right to feel sorrow, and to mourn the loss of the life I planned to have.  I have every right to feel angry that Kawasaki Disease came into my daughter’s life and robbed her of her health so soon after she arrived in this world.  I have every right to feel angry that the world keeps turning, and that people are moving on even though I seem to be stuck in this perpetual Kawahell.  Today, I hate Kawasaki Disease.  It broke my baby’s heart, and it broke mine too.

Most of all, I hate that this disease took away some of the joy that I ought to feel from moments like this…

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Memories of another you

Posted on by Bluemama

The other day I awoke to a Facebook memory; a picture of you from the same day a year ago.  You were 4 days old, we were home, and you were in your bouncy chair staring at me.  At first I smiled at the memory; that little face full of wonder at a new world that you could barely see through eyes so new.  But then, like a lengthening shadow, sadness crept in.

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Those days we had with you were so few before Kawasaki Disease pushed its way into our lives and stole you from us.  The you we knew. The you I gave birth to.  The you that wasn’t broken.  I don’t think I will ever learn how to come to terms with what this disease did to you. You were born healthy, and perfect and pure.  For 7 weeks we got to know each other at home, barely going out, because I wanted to be sure I gave myself the chance to drink you in.  We cuddled on the sofa for hours, and I fed you from my breast because I wanted you to have the best start in this world.  I know now how important those moments were, and I am thankful that I cherished you and didn’t feel any pressure to share you with the outside.  It’s like I knew.

But I didn’t know.  I had no idea that things would change for you, for us, overnight.  You were so perfect, so well.  We had no concerns at all about your development or your health.  You were nothing short of perfection, and I was smitten from the moment I looked down at you from my position on that labour bed.

I guess these memories are going to act as triggers for a while.  Seven weeks of memories of the you we had will be replaced by memories of the worst days of my life.  At least I came away from Facebook for a while just before you became sick; that I can be thankful for.  But then, I don’t need Facebook memories to remind me of those days; those days are forever etched on my mind.  I can’t accept the cruelty of it all.  To have struggled so much with the concept of finding myself pregnant again but come through it having battled some old demons and actually looking forward to this new adventure, only to see it come crashing down around my feet was cruel indeed.  We didn’t deserve this.  You didn’t.

I try to tell myself that I should be thankful you are here with us.  Things could have been very different.  In that first week in the hospital I was convinced I would be going home without you, you were so sick.  And when they told us that your little heart was damaged I prepared myself for the worst.  The psychologist told me that what I was experiencing was anticipatory grief; I had been presented with the possibility that you might be taken from us, and my mind had already begun to process that notion.  I could see a certain photograph of you on an easel at the top of a church aisle; that photograph haunts me still, and was the catalyst for my thoughts and feelings on those eyes of yours.  I told myself that if I accepted that this disease would kill you, that I might not take you for granted for the time that you are here.  I guess, even though it’s a little morbid, it’s not a bad way of thinking about it.  I mean, if the worst is that you have a life full of wonder until you are 90 then we won’t have lost anything will we? It’s a good rule to live by, and there are hundreds of cliches I could quote about living life to the full that would fit right in here. We were lucky that your heart began to show signs of improvement, and that we haven’t had to live with that feeling forever – others do.

Using the word ‘lucky’ to describe you makes me flinch, and the bully in my head says “Watch it! You’re not out of the woods yet! Don’t be counting those chickens already…!”

I hate Kawasaki Disease.  I hate it for stealing my memories and turning them into reasons to be sad and full of regret.  I hate that I can’t look at a picture of my tiny baby without feeling sorrow for the short time we had before our lives became filled with fear and drama.  I hate  that I can’t hold another baby without feeling like I’ve missed out on so much.  I held you for seven weeks, and it would be weeks before I could properly hold you again.  I could have held you, but your temperature soared relentlessly for a fortnight and I was scared that I would make you even hotter than you already were.  And I hated the tubes and the wires and the needles; the slightest movement would set the monitors off screaming and the nurses running.  I hated the look in your eyes; you were too young to be afraid.  I wish I knew how you felt when you were lying there in that cot with a vacant stare.

I hate it for making me look at the world through different eyes.  I am wary of the world now.  I know first hand that it has the power to take away everything that you love and I  approach every day with caution, even when I try to find joy.  Sometimes I think I have seen something out of the corner of my eye.  It’s like I see Death waiting in the shadows.  Kawasaki Disease sucks.

75% of children who have this disease will walk away without any heart complications.  They are the lucky ones, but that doesn’t take away the terror of the experience for the child or the parent.  But why did you have to be one of the 25%? Why couldn’t it have just left your tiny heart alone? Could it have been prevented? The doctors ruled out their suspicion that it could be KD on day 9, and yet it was lurking and continued to do it’s damage whilst their backs were turned.  4 days later it became clear that it had been Kawasaki Disease all along. I wonder how the doctors felt when the echo showed them that awful truth…

None of that matters now, I guess.  It’s done isn’t it, and there is nothing we can do to change it.  I have to learn to accept that we live in a world where uncertainty is the only thing that is certain.  Death and taxes.  This world is full of beauty, but it is also home to a lot of hurt.  And as if there wasn’t already enough sadness to deal with in this life, there are people who see fit to cause others pain.  Why do people do that? It is beyond me.

Anyway, enough of this morose talk.  What ever will you think of your mother when you read this stuff?!  It’s hard though Peanut, it really is.  The emotions I have to deal with every time I look at you are a bit too big for me sometimes; sadness, regret, guilt, anger, fear…love.  I just need to get myself back on track with our plans to turn this whole sorry mess into something positive.  You’ve raised a lot of money – £7,000 in just one month of fundraising for one event!  And you’ve even appeared on ITV News (http://www.itv.com/news/calendar/2016-04-13/mothers-plea-for-early-diagnosis-of-rare-kawasaki-disease/).  We will do what we can together to raise awareness of the disease, so that the next time a child presents the symptoms, their parent might just ask the question, “You don’t think it could be Kawasaki Disease do you?”

 

75,000 Reasons to be Thankful…

Posted on by Bluemama

So Peanut, where do I start?  I guess a good place to start would be to thank you.  Thank you for coming into the world, despite all my efforts to ruin that.  I wasn’t sure that you were welcome in my life when I found out that you were coming along.  Some people might say I ought not to share that, but do you know what? I’m not afraid of my honesty, because I know that you will never, ever feel that you were not wanted.  So I wasn’t sure I was going to love you when you were growing inside me, not in those early months.  But towards the end, our bond began to grow, and when you arrived into the world, a tiny, purple, screeching thing, I knew that the past didn’t matter.  What mattered was that you were here, you were alive (yes, I was afraid of that), and that there was no question in my mind that I loved you at that moment, and that I would continue to love you for the rest of my life.

You were so precious, and I held you so tight I was afraid I would crush you.  But I had been on such a journey to get to that point with you that I had to feel you in my arms, really feel you.  Years ago, when your older sister and brother were born, babies seemed to be whisked off, the moment they arrived, for the all important weighing and measuring.  It seems the health service have learned a thing or two about bonding since then.  I remember saying over and over to the midwife, to your Auntie and your Daddy that were all there with me to share the moment when you burst into that delivery room, “Am I hurting her?”, “Am I holding her too tight?”  And they told me to relax, and I held you for the longest time, drinking every bit of you in.  I felt like I had been truly blessed.  Not in the glib clichéd sense, but actually blessed with a gift.  You were a sign.  A sign that proved to me that I was indeed a lucky person, and all the insecurities, fears and negativity I had held onto for so long were allowed to be set free.

In the early weeks, I took heed of all the advice I had been given and ignored with your siblings.  We didn’t go out of the house for weeks.  We spent our days cuddled up in the cosy corner of the sofa and got to know each other.  When you slept, so did I; the housework could wait.  And I didn’t feel any need to rush out to meet people or go places, because I wasn’t ready to share you with the world yet.  You were all mine, and I all yours.  There would be time for all that fun stuff later.  Had I known what would happen 7 weeks later, might I have done things differently?  No, I don’t think I would have.  In fact I am glad I made the choices that I did, because at least I got to have the perfect you all to myself for 7 blissful weeks.  Before…well you already know what happened next.

I am not going to dwell on the following weeks, on your illness, on your diagnosis or the effects that Kawasaki Disease have had on you.  By the time you read this we will have covered all that.  No, this letter is about thanks, so lets get back to the point shall we.

You truly are a remarkable little girl, Freya.  You have endured so much in your little life, and yet you have managed with a grace that shouldn’t even be possible at your age.  You have more courage than I have seen in people more than 20 years your senior.  Your heart, tiny by comparison, has the ability to love with more fervour than any adult I have met in my 41 years on this Earth.  You touched my heart in some magical way the moment you were born, and you have continued to touch the hearts of everyone who has encountered you since.  You have something special within your soul, that shines out like a beacon through those eyes.  Eyes that have both the power to haunt and to heal me.

You have taken everything your short life has thrown at you in your stride, before you are even able to walk a step! Even when you were critically ill and your eyes pleaded with me to help you, your little mouth worked so hard to form a smile.  And later, as you started to get stronger, you smiled for every nurse and every doctor that crossed your path.  And there were a lot!  You even managed to bowl the phlebotomists over when they came to take your blood.  You would cry for a moment, but once they had taken their fill, that smile would spread across your face like a sunbeam and I would see that you had made someone’s day.  Again.

Thank you for inspiring me to write.  Well, it was your Auntie who gave me the journal and the pen, but you were my muse.  I remember opening that book, and wondering where to start, and then I looked over at you in your cot and I knew you were scared and I had to tell you what was going on.  And so the letters began.  I didn’t give it too much thought after that; the letters just came, at the end of every day when you were sleeping.  I would write in the moonlit room, laid on the parent bed by the side of your cot.  Sometimes I would think about how you would learn all about those days, because I knew you wouldn’t remember them.  Often, it was a chance for me to keep a note of the facts as your story unfolded.  Sometimes, on particularly bad days sweetheart, I would wonder if I would ever get to share your story with you, and I wondered if I knew deep down that I could really be writing for myself.  But let’s not dwell on that, eh?

I knew your story was one that I needed to share.  It came from an intense need to make sure that you had not suffered in vain.  To walk away and do nothing would have made me feel like it was unimportant, and it felt too important for me to do that.  In every moment that I wrote through tears in my journal, I felt that there was another parent like me in a hospital room somewhere with their child; sad, scared and alone.  I felt alone.  I scoured the internet,  I contacted Doctors near and far, and I joined social media support groups searching for answers.  The thing is, you can find the basic answers for the typical cases, but your case was an atypical one in many ways.  Any answers I did get were like gold, and whilst I knew that the information I gathered in relation to your case would not be appropriate to generalise, I knew that I couldn’t hold onto them.

And so Freya’s Story began.  I resurrected this blog, and created your tag.  And then I created a Facebook page that would help me to broaden the audience for awareness.  I had a lot of catching up to do – I had written 40,000 words in that journal if I remember correctly! So I began the task of transferring those journal entries onto my blog, whilst updating on your current situation.  There are many other social media pages who are dedicated to raising awareness and keeping people like me informed on latest news and developments in the world of Kawasaki’s.  The various support group pages were great, but sometimes the updates about children who were continuing to experience health issues years after diagnosis would push me into a very dark place.  Sadly, that is the reality of the disease, I know that.  But I wanted to use your page to show people that there is #lifeafterkawasakis.  Of course the disease continues to blight our life.  You have continued complications with your heart that are still unknown.  In a couple of month’s time you will go into hospital for an invasive procedure to try and get some idea of what is going on.  So far, you look like a miracle kid.  But we need to look deeper to be sure.

Freya’s Story is about more than the disease though.  It is about a special little girl, who has the ability to inspire a mum to write; I always knew I had words in me, I was just lacking the inspiration.  It’s about a pair of eyes that have the power to lock with the reader’s through a screen and implore them to read your story.  It’s about flying in the face of adversity, seizing opportunities, loving life and having hope.  It’s a celebration of a little girl who will not allow some nasty bastard illness (sorry for the language but I get a bit angry at KD sometimes) to stand in her way.  You are not the Kawasaki Kid.  You are my marvel, and you surprise me every day.  I hope as you read this, all grown and proud of whatever you have achieved in your life, that you still cannot see the scars that KD left you with.  It is an invisible illness that shows itself for a while, then skulks back off into the shadows where it belongs.

I knew I had done the right thing as soon as the messages started coming in.  Ok, so Freya’s Story hasn’t exactly gone viral – let’s face it, Kawasaki Disease doesn’t have the same amount of clout as Meningitis, say, but it needs putting on the map, and you and I will help to put it there.  And anyway, if even just one parent feels less alone, or one child receives a swift diagnosis or the right treatment after reading our blog, then we achieved what we set out to.  We’ve had parents sending messages of hope, parents asking questions about medication, treatment, immunisations, all kinds of stuff.  I’ve had to be careful with my responses; I don’t have a medical degree (although I do sometimes feel like I have one in KD), so I have mainly signposted parents to useful social media pages, internet links, research papers, support groups and the like.  I have given words of comfort when they’ve been asked of me.  I’ve kept people up to date with how you are doing when they’ve contacted me to ask how you are.   We’ve been credited with helping parents get the treatment that they needed for their child, and helping some people through some lonely times.  I am sure there have been some doctors across the country muttering “Who is this Freya’s mother?!” But I have never claimed to know it all. I only know about you really.  But at least I have been able to provide information that has helped to inform discussion and provide a line of questioning that might previously have been more difficult for a parent to navigate.  Thank you for inspiring me to do that.

You might not thank me for it, but I am sacrificing your 1st Birthday to raise funds for Kawasaki Disease research.  Ever since I made contact with the Professor heading the research after we sent off our swabs for genetic testing, I knew I had to do something.  I had asked the Professor to show me a tangible offering for parents like me to donate to.  Something that would show us how we could contribute to the amazing opportunity that had been granted to Professor Jane Burns in the States.  He cemented the offering in a 2-page document with a link to the COSMIC Kawasaki Disease Research Fund campaign on the Virgin Money Giving site, and I shared it with the Kawasaki community back in November last year.  Once I had a willing recipient, I could concentrate on bringing in some funds – no matter how small our contribution might be, the Professor had assured me it would be worthwhile and gratefully received.  And so the idea of turning your birthday party into a fundraiser was born.  I’ll tell you another time about those details, but for now, I want to thank you for forgiving me for giving up your birthday for Kawasaki Disease.  I have promised that I will not steal any more birthdays from you.

There are so many people to thank for their contribution to your birthday party, and it’s not for another 6 weeks! I will make sure I cover that when I blog about your event.  From local businesses donating prizes to entertainers offering free services, we’ve had a huge amount of support.  The local press have followed your story since we first approached them to help us raise awareness after you came home.  We’ve had cupcakes sold in your honour, and cash donations have started to hit the Virgin Money page.

And then there was this one thing, that started with a Tweet.  

Twitter and I are kind of new friends.  I set up your Twitter account not really knowing what I was going to do with it.  I still don’t really, but I dabble here and there and started to share your blogs when I’d worked out how to!  I mainly use it to hound celebrities in an attempt to increase the reach of your story and shine the spotlight on Kawasaki Disease.  I have had some successes; some of the key KD and Rare Disease organisations follow Freya’s Story.  We’ve had retweets from some celebrity Doctors, like Dr Miriam Stoppard and Dr David Bull.  One of the stars of TOWIE retweeted once, and we’ve had a couple from actresses and directors.  We set out on a bit of a challenge with a Kawadad from the other end of the country, (you know who you are!) but he has had more success than we have, lol!  I have a lot to learn about Twitter it would seem.

But, somewhere, on one sleepless night during their own Kawasaki ordeal, it would seem that the right person stumbled across your story.  They saw that we were raising money for the Kawasaki Research Collaboration between Imperial College London and Rady Children’s Hospital in San Diego.  And that person did a remarkable thing;

“…managed to get…some funding for research. 75 thousand pounds…”

Even though I’ve had that information for a couple of days now, I still struggle to let that sink in.  I think my response was something like “Are you serious? How is that even possible?!” which was met with a reply about the world not being all bad.

I received an e-mail from the charity too, but I still didn’t quite believe it Peanut.  How could we have inspired such a huge donation?   But it is true.  And if the donation can be counted towards the collaboration pot, it will be doubled. Meaning that single investment in research is worth £150,000!!

“…you may want to thank someone who raised awareness about the KD research thru her twitter activity: I found you guys late at night reading the posts from a @freya_story” 

Thank you for giving me a story to tell.  Whilst I would have given anything to have prevented you from going through this, I can take comfort in the fact that because this happened to you, great things might happen.  No amount of raising of awareness or funds will change what happened to our family 8 months ago.  The emotional scars will take a long time, perhaps forever, to heal.  What I hope it will do, what every parent who has experienced this with their child hopes, is that the research being undertaken now will change the future of Kawasaki Disease and the lives that it lays claim to.

I’m going to leave you with these lovely words, received from Ilsen Cafer (Fundraising Co-ordinator for COSMIC – Children of St Mary’s Intensive Care);

“…You deserve to be very, very proud.  I can’t imagine how tough a time it must have been for you and your family when Freya was diagnosed, but your special little girl, her story and your courage have helped lots of parents, as well as inspired a donation which will make a difference to the lives of Kawasaki patients around the world.  Never underestimate the impact of your story, you’re doing a fantastic job!” 

“…Please tell Freya in her letter that she is our little COSMIC star and that she should be very proud that aged only 1 she has inspired so much more than most people ever do!”

It seems that I have so many people to thank, and so much to be thankful for, despite this terrible experience that we have all been through at the hands of this disease.  Most of all though, I have to thank you for being you.  You have got us through this.  You.

And then there’s one person whom I would like to be able to thank 75,000 times, and that is one very cool Italian dad who lives in Hong Kong.  Thank you from the bottom of our hearts.

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The Thing with Rare Diseases…

Posted on by Bluemama

…is that they happen to someone else.  At least that’s what I thought.  What are the odds of my little family being struck by some random illness that nobody has heard of? Well, I’ll tell you. 8:100,000. Those are the odds. 8 in every 100,000 children in the UK are diagnosed with this condition every year. The illness is called Kawasaki Disease. My daughter is Freya.

Today is National Rare Disease Day, so I thought I would focus on that for the subject of my latest blog post. I want to tell you what it means to have a rare disease enter your world.

The thing with a Rare Disease is…

They like playing hard to get.  Some of them are so well-disguised that they masquerade as a number of more common illnesses.  Take Kawasaki Disease.  You take your child to your GP with the symptoms of KD and you’ll most likely be sent home with the word ‘virus’ ringing in your ears. You’ll be told to give four-hourly paracetamol, interspersed with the same regular dose of ibuprofen; antipyretics to keep that troublesome fever down.  Days will pass, but you’ll believe the drugs will eventually do their work once the virus has run its course.  How many days do you let it run its course for? 3 days? Maybe more?  Did you know that there’s a UK medical protocol for dealing witha child  who has presented with a fever for more than 5 days? You’ll tell yourself that the rash that appeared after a couple of days is simply viral.  The eyes look bloodshot; wow this cold really has taken it’s toll on them. And your child is irritable and lethargic all at once, but aren’t all kids when they are poorly? You might even return to the GP, get a course of antibiotics, keep on with those painkillers to take the heat off the discomfort, literally.  Your GP might diagnose Scarlet Fever, or perhaps hand, foot and mouth.  Chances are, your child will not receive a diagnosis of KD until it’s too late. Until the vasculitis that has inflamed every blood vessel in your child’s body has managed to reach their little heart.  Coronary artery dilation and/or coronary artery aneurysms. There’s really only one thing that can cause those in a kid. Kawasaki Disease.

That’s not quite how it happened with us. We were one of the ‘lucky’ ones in that our daughter’s age and the day of the week played a huge part in getting her in the right place at the right time.  At 7 weeks old she was too young for Calpol, and on a Sunday there’s no GP to get it wrong. That said, Kawasaki Disease disguised itself as bacterial meningitis for the first week of Freya’s illness, and then decided to affect her body atypically, making the job of reaching a diagnosis all the more challenging.

It’s quite often a rebel without a cause. Where KD is concerned the cause is yet to be discovered. Without a cause, and with so many children presenting with the illness in a very independent way – not all children get the same symptoms at the same time – there’s no diagnostic test.  The treatment for the disease is effective, but we’re not really sure why.  Knowing the cause of this disease would open the door to swifter diagnosis and better treatment.  With KD it’s a bit of a race against time.  There’s a magical 10-day window within which to treat in order to improve the chances of the heart getting off a bit more lightly. Outside of that, the disease can get too much of a head start. Freya’s heart went from normal to screwed within 5 days.  The disease hid itself well for nearly 2 weeks, until on day 13 (unlucky for some) it went “ta-daa” on an echocardiogram. Nice move KD.

Rare means your doctor probably hasn’t seen it. They may not have even heard of it. So they’re most definitely not looking for it. I’ve spoken with GP’s who have not yet seen a case in their 20 year career. Naturally, doctors will work through the most likely culprits first. They’re not on high alert for some disease that quite frankly sounds ridiculous with its made-up name that conjures images of motorbikes (it’s not actually made up, it is named after Dr Tomasaku Kawasaki, who discovered the disease a few decades ago). But it sounds it. Some rare disorders don’t even have a name. In order to reach a diagnosis for a rare disorder, the medical professionals will have to go through a process of elimination with the more common illnesses that bear the same or similar symptoms. They will test for countless infectious diseases but draw a blank. Do you know, I actually thought they would take my daughter’s blood, put it into a computer and out would come the answer. I had no idea before this, that there were things you couldn’t test for. Silly really. Sometimes the Drs will try certain drugs, only to be baffled by the body’s lack of responsiveness. Our daughter had 4 different IV antibiotics entering her tiny little body, and yet she became more and more sick as the days went on. I couldn’t understand why the Drs weren’t making her better. But our child was diagnosed on day 13 and was treated accordingly. There are people out there with illnesses yet to be named, perhaps even discovered. Those people could wait years for a diagnosis. Two weeks felt like torture. I cannot imagine how that would have felt multiplied into months, let alone years.

If you’ve not heard of it, it can’t be that bad. Right? That’s what I thought. The day before Freya was diagnosed with KD she had a bone marrow aspirate taken in theatre under general anaesthetic. The moment they mentioned bone marrow, I knew they were looking for the ‘C’ word. What they found instead was a whole lot of healthy cells, and she was cleared of that. Relief.  But then the next morning you’re told that they’ve found it! You can’t quite believe it because the last 2 weeks have seemed like an eternity and now the wait is over! They tell you your child has Kawasaki Disease and you actually feel the tension in your shoulders disappear. Aren’t we lucky it’s only Kawasaki Disease. Never heard of that one so it can’t be a bad one. No, the bad stuff everyone has heard of. Leukaemia, meningitis…they’re the baddies aren’t they. No this Kawasaki Disease had to be ok. If it was that bad I’d have heard about it. Wouldn’t I? Except that it is that bad, but you don’t hear about it because your local children’s hospital has probably only seen 4 cases in the last year, and they all looked different.

Rare means there are so many unknowns.  If an illness is rare, it might not have been around for very long.  There might not be many known patients with the disease. Which makes treatment more tricky.  There is no standard UK protocol for the diagnosis and treatment of Kawasaki Disease.  That means you really are at the mercy of the doctors that you are dealing with. Again, I believe we were ‘lucky’.  From the moment a diagnosis was reached they worked tirelessly to aggressively handle this disease. NHS England gave permission for certain drugs to be used on Freya that had not been agreed for use in an infant.  They referred to her case as “a very severe presentation of Kawasaki Disease” remarking that the illness is particularly troublesome in very young babies.

Unknowns are hard to deal with, especially if you’re a bit of a control freak like me. I like to have all my ducks in a row. There’s no chance of that with this. And just as you begin to think things are looking up, KD throws you another curveball.   Long term prognosis is sketchy. But in all fairness, what long term studies have been carried out suggest that Freya might just come through this ok.

Rare is lonely. When you or your child is diagnosed with something pretty obscure you literally feel like the only person in the universe that is going through what you are. Because nobody had heard of KD it felt (still does sometimes) like they didn’t really appreciate the seriousness of it.  Even now, with everything I have shared through Freya’s Story, people ask “So, is she ok now then?”  Never quite quite how to answer that one.  Usually with a “Yes she’s doing really well..” When actually what I want to say is “Yeah, unless you count the fact that’s she now has a heart condition and we don’t know what’s around the corner…”  And it’s not just the general public either. You feel very alone when you’re dealing with Drs that can’t answer your questions because they just don’t know.

That’s where support groups come in. Through the various groups on Facebook I have connected with other parents like me who too have felt scared and lonely. Whilst all of our experiences might have differed slightly, one thing that unites us all is an understanding of the fear when you watch your child begin to slip away from you, and the sheer devastation of hearing that your child has been damaged by this disease. And let’s face it,  the heart is a pretty important organ.

Rare changes you. Since Freya’s illness, I have changed.  I suffer with anxiety, and was recently diagnosed with PTSD. I see a counsellor once every week for cognitive behavioural therapy to help me deal with the trauma of the last year. I find it hard to be around people who don’t understand, or don’t make the effort to. I probably find more comfort in chatting to a fellow ‘Kawamum’ online than I would get from a closest friend.  This experience has left me questioning everything I believed about my role in protecting my child.  I grieve for the healthy baby I gave birth to; the one with the perfect heart. And I am very much aware of our own mortality now. I am scared of dying, and I am scared of loss.

There is an upside. I have met some amazing and lovely people along the way. This experience has taught me that life really is precious and that you should embrace opportunities as they arise. I don’t have the strength for disappointment these days, so I have probably reduced my circle for now, a kind of damage limitation.  I take a lot of joy in meeting people who have been touched by Freya’s Story.   I get messages from strangers that remember when she has a medical appointment, or ask me how I got on at my counselling session. The well wishes and words of encouragement from those people has lifted me from the darkest of moods.

The support from friends and local businesses with prizes for a raffle that we will be drawing on Freya’s 1st birthday has been overwhelming. People are so generous, and I am very grateful to them. I may never come to terms with the fact that this happened to us, to our baby girl. But knowing that Freya has touched the hearts of so many has made this journey a little easier to travel.

So on this Rare Disease Day 2016, I would like to thank everyone out there who is helping to shine a light on Freya by sharing her story and supporting us with our ambition to raise awareness and much needed funding for research. Thank you ☺️

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You can follow Freya’s Story with updates on her progress and other KD news at http://www.facebook.com/freyasstory

All I need

Posted on by Bluemama

You are all I need Peanut.  Sure, there are other people that make me happy, but no-one has the power to make the sun shine through the rain like you do.  For me, you have become a symbol of strength and love, and a living example to all of us that we really should grab this life with everything we’ve got, because there really are no guarantees.

Quite often that makes me sad.  I can’t help but wonder what your future holds; sometimes I wish I had a crystal ball so I could see your life unfold and be happy that this thing isn’t going to get you one day.  But I guess there’s no fun in that is there?  So I have to hold on to hope.

You have a cardiology appointment next week, sweetheart.  I always find myself a little more melancholy than normal, and a bit more anxious that I usually am, as the date approaches.  The problem with me, is that I like to be in control.  And this most definitely does not allow for me to have control.  None.  I don’t expect the appointment to give me any surprises.  Not bad ones anyway.  Your condition, if it gets worse, is unlikely to get worse any time soon.  We may even be blessed with improvement, but let’s not jinx things, eh?  The best I can hope for is no change.  And even then, it’s a limited view.  What’s frightening is that we only know what we can see.  An echocardiogram can only show us about 3mm into your arteries.  Beyond that you need an MRI scan, but they have no plans to go looking yet.  I wonder why?  Maybe because you are so young, it would be preferable not to sedate you. I have to remind myself that the only reason you didn’t need to be sedated for your last MRI was because you were too sick to care.

I think, to all intents and purposes, we could be bold enough to say you are out of the woods for now.  Can I say that?  Should I say that?  The scientific part of my brain keeps telling me that the only thing that can cause you any problems is biology; my words will not be the cause.  Thoughts are not facts.  For now, I have two questions for the Cardiologist.  “What will I need to do throughout her life to protect her heart?”  and “Remember when you took me in a room and told me about the risk of a coronary aneurysm rupture, and how you told me that you could do nothing to prevent it, and that if it happened she would be gone?  Well, do you think that is a risk now?” Let’s see if we can get some questions answered next week shall we? So you will need to behave yourself.  You won’t! You’ve been trying to take over the echo since all this started; next week you are going to be rolling, and grabbing, and trying to crawl off the table!  Things just got interesting!

So it’s just dawned on me that I never had one of those baby books, the kind where you write all the milestones down.  To be honest, I had books with your brother and sister, but the novelty wore off a few weeks in and there are two half-finished (half-started?) baby record books gathering dust in the loft.  And then I thought I could do it here.  So let’s see, what can I tell you about you….

You have been sitting up for a while now.  For some time it seemed like you were never going to get there, but you did.  Your preferred mode of transport continues to be the ‘commando crawl‘ – you’d be fantastic on one of those military assault courses! And you’re fast Peanut, real fast! When you spot something you want, you can be at your target in a nanosecond.  I have to be on full alert – generally the thing you spot is something you shouldn’t have and everything goes in your mouth.  When I thought I’d cleaned up all the pine needles from the Christmas tree, you still somehow manage to find them.  And eat them.

You have a real sense of fun.  You are going to be like your brother; full of mischief.  You are always doing something, always busy.  You’ve just started getting up on your knees too, which means more of the world is within your reach, and I can see how exciting that is for you.  You are always in my kitchen cupboards, always pulling books off the bookshelves, always finding the one thing amongst all the other things that you are not allowed to have.  You are going to keep me busy!

You have a few words in your vocabulary.  “Daddy” has been a favourite for some time.  There’s something very cruel about ‘dadadadada’ being the easiest sound for a baby to make.  You’ve said a clear as a bell “Mama” once.  It was magic.  You’ve not said it since.  Your absolute favourite is “Uh-oh”, which was remarkable when you first said it because it alerted me to the fact that you had dropped something, like that time you dropped your toy in Marks and Spencer and I wondered why you wouldn’t stop saying “Uh-oh”.  Now it seems that “Uh-oh” is a catchall word for everything.  I think it means you are hungry, thirsty, tired, sad, angry, happy…it’s a one word fits all kind of thing!  I’ve been able to make out a few other discernible words; doggy, dinner, bye-bye.  You know your sister.  She’s Eliza.  That’s “a-la-la” to you.

And you laugh sweetheart, you really laugh.  Just a couple of weeks ago, we needed to tickle you to incite a giggle.  Now you laugh at everything and everyone! You laugh at trees and flowers, birds and cats, me, your dinner, everything! Just the sight of those tickling fingers coming your way and you are reduced to an uncontrollable cackle.  You see joy in most things, and you are slowly teaching me to do the same.

But, it isn’t all hearts and flowers my little cherub.  There is one thing that is currently driving me crazy, and that’s the scream! You have developed a squeal that would rival any dolphin, and brings half the neighbourhood’s dogs to our doorstep.  I think, roughly translated, it means “Hey, you, why are you not giving me your 100% total undivided attention right at this very second and every second after it?” but I don’t talk baby, so who knows if I’ve got that right.  Most mums could probably ignore it.  Unfortunately, I suffer with anxiety, and have real trouble with noise, so that little scream goes right through me and rings in my ears.  Let’s hope it passes soon (either the screaming or the anxiety – both would be nice).

You do still hold the title of ‘Epic Sleeper’, and if I didn’t know you were real I would start to wonder if you were some kind of clockwork toy.  I’ve looked for the key, I can’t find one.  The daylight hours are short with you Pickle.  You wake around 7am (sometimes later), nap for anything up to 2 hours at about 10am, and from 4pm to 6pm your constant squawking acts as a reminder that it is nearly bedtime.  6pm comes, you’re milk-drunk and sleepy and off you pop to bed, and we don’t hear a peep from you ’til morning.  So, on a 2-hour-nap day, I figure we get about 9 hours of you.  The thought of going back to work and that becoming 1 hour is unfathomable.

I don’t know if you will ever remember this time in your life.  I hope you don’t. Your first year has been blighted with illness, fear, hospitals, and me.  And when I say me, I don’t mean that I’m not a good mum to you.   I shout sometimes because the anxiety builds up inside my like gas in a pop bottle, and sometimes your brother or your sister, or a noise, or a setback, shakes me up just a little too much and the lid blows off.  And I am often sad.  I cry.  A lot.  I can’t tell you that I love you without tears pricking my eyes; I hope you don’t grow up associating love with sadness.  Sometimes when I look at you for too long, your face becomes the face of that tiny baby pleading with me with her eyes.  I don’t sleep that well either, because I’m always straining to hear you breathing on the monitor.  When I wake, it feels like I have slept holding my breath, and I am frozen in my bed until I hear a shuffle or a snuffle from you.  I am sure all this will pass, and I am getting help for it so that I can get this under control before you do start to notice that mummy is always sad.

It is lucky, then, that I adore you.  You are a pleasure to be around (which is lucky indeed, as you are the only person I see very much of!).  If  you were a different baby, I reckon I’d have cracked up by now.   But you, my dearest Freya, are the light in the darkest of days.  Sometimes, you look at me with those ocean deep eyes, and it’s like your very soul is speaking to me; “I’m gonna be ok mummy.”  

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Please feel free to like, share or comment on my posts. You can also learn about Freya’s journey with Kawasaki Disease at http://www.facebook.com/freyasstory

To Immunise or not to Immunise…

Posted on by Bluemama

…That is the Kawaquestion!

If you’ve been following Freya’s Story through my blog or on Facebook (www.facebook.com.freyasstory), then you’ll know that one of the hurdles I have been trying to get over since her diagnosis and treatment for Kawasaki Disease is the question of when to immunise.  When is the important question here – it is not a question of ‘if’ for me.  Freya is my 3rd child; I had the older two vaccinated in line with the standard UK immunisation schedules without hesitation.  They both had the (then controversial) MMR vaccination that was vilified for years, for those claims to be later contradicted by the very doctor who made them.  I am not an antivaxer (yes, that is a word that is banded around various mum networks).  I can’t say I’m a provaxer either to be fair; in all things medical I am a conformist.  I trust the NHS and the doctors to have made the right decisions.  Well I used to anyway.

Now before I go on to share all the information I have in relation to this subject, there are a couple of things you should know.  First of all, the information I have received is contradictory to say the least.  I’ve even had different information from the same doctor, just on a different day.  And therein lies one of the biggest issues, and the key reason why we should be campaigning for standard protocols for treatment and care of Kawasaki patients.  But that’s a whole other blog.  Secondly, I take no responsibility for the decisions you may make in relation to this issue.  I am not a medical professional; I am just a mum that wants to do the right thing for her child.  I could not protect my baby from Kawasaki Disease; I have to be able to protect her from the other nasties, if I can.  I will share the information I have and where I’ve found it.  You also need to understand that Freya’s case is an individual one.  We certainly haven’t found a doctor in the UK who has received a patient as young as Freya where Kawasaki’s is concerned.  Generally children are older (commonly between 6 months and 5 years) and have therefore already begun their immunisation journey.  Infants diagnosed with this disease have often already had at least the first tranche of jabs (leading some to believe the vaccine to have been the trigger that KD needed to start it’s evil – a theory that I don’t discount, in fact I find it a very interesting theory with some validity and would not be surprised if it is confirmed as one of the triggers in the not too distant future).  Indeed, some of the vaccines state an increased risk of Kawasaki Disease in the patient information – information we often don’t read before we give consent for the needle to go in.  Again, I do not want to be a scaremonger, and it is absolutely not my intention to send cats amongst pigeons.  I’ve already said I am a provaxer.  I am pro-choice in all things – but I believe in those choices being informed if you are someone like me who needs to know it all (and often thinks she does, lol!).  

Freya was 7 weeks old when she became sick.  She was hospitalised on the very first day that she showed a single symptom (fever) and spent a number of days on a paediatric HDU, several weeks in a Children’s Hospital, and a week on a Cardiac HDU.  We hadn’t yet seen a health visitor, and the appointment for her first set of immunisations (8 weeks) has just come through.  I guess due to her condition, and later the treatment she received, it wasn’t possible to start the process of vaccinating with Freya whilst she was in the hospital.  She was 7 weeks old when she went in, and 13 weeks when she came out, so she was already behind schedule.  She received a blood transfusion, intravenous immunoglobulin (a blood product) and intravenous and oral steroids.  All of these have an impact on the immune system, rendering vaccination difficult for a certain period of time.  And I can’t be more specific than that, because that is one of the biggest areas of contradiction I have come across when researching this subject, and the reason why now, at nearly 10 months old, Freya has not had a single vaccination.

Some might wonder why that is an issue.  Plenty of parents (those antivaxers) make the decision not to immunise their children against some or even all of the diseases that the immunisation schedules seek to protect them from.  There are children who are unable to receive the immunisations because of poor, weakened or non-existent immunity.  We vaccinate the many to protect the few; herd immunity.  I could trust that everyone else has been protected, so Freya will be ok among the herd.  But, what if…  And then there is chicken pox – we don’t routinely vaccinate for that here in the UK (they do in the States).  If you Google “chicken pox and aspirin” you will find one big reason why aspirin and kids don’t mix; Reye’s Syndrome, a rare but potentially fatal illness linked to the fever associated with Chicken Pox and Influenza in children taking aspirin.  Ok, so the link has been found where high doses of aspirin are taken, and not yet with the low anti-platelet doses that a KD kid is prescribed, but nonetheless it’s a nasty illness and one I don’t want to take any chances with.  Freya has been through enough.

So what happens if you have a child who has not been immunised, and you are concerned about them coming into contact with what others would consider pretty innocuous illnesses?  Let me tell you what happens with us.  Freya has not been to a baby group; not baby massage, or baby music, or baby yoga.  Hell, she hasn’t even been to a playgroup, and when my older two get invited to a kids party, Freya stays at home.  Don’t get me wrong; we have not become social recluses.  Instead I apply my common sense to the activities we will undertake.  I know there might be someone in the coffee shop who has the flu.  Why is that kid in the shopping centre not at school? Could they have chicken pox?  I can’t hide us away from the whole world, but I can reduce the risk of her coming into contact with these nasty germs and bugs.  I call it damage limitation. She has one or two little friends that she sees from time to time, but only when they are well.  And don’t forget she has an older brother and sister who are exposed to all manner of things at school every day – we don’t make them wear a mask!  It is a source of sadness for me though.  Freya is such a happy, sociable child, and I worry about the effect this lack of exposure to her peers might have on her development.  I want her to laugh and play with other children, to learn how to share, to grow bonds and discover new things.  Instead there is a lot of singing and dancing going on in this house, which isn’t a bad thing (unless you’ve heard my singing!!). And with a bit of luck we can catch up with those immunisations soon and provide what we believe to be a little protective bubble around our child before it is too late for her to start over.  The knock-on effect of KD will be huge – when I return to work, she will have to go to some form of childcare.  She will be over a year old, and will never have been with anyone else other than her close family.  That’s going to be a tough one for both of us to handle…

Let me go back to the beginning of Freya’s immunisation journey.  While we were in the hospital with Freya we were advised that she shouldn’t have the immunisations, first because of her condition, and secondly because of the medication.  A lady used to pop her head in our cubicle door every other day with an immunisation leaflet and I repeated often that we had been advised Freya would have to be left to catch up.  I was promised an individualised immunisation schedule to leave the hospital with; it never materialised.  I made a number of calls to the hospital to enquire about when I could start the process, and to the Health Visiting team to ask them to stop the weekly postal reminders telling me what I already knew; Freya had not received her first immunisations.  Eventually I got the call from the hospital that advised I could give her any killed (inactive) vaccinations immediately (she was discharged one month after treatment for KD), but that I should wait 3 months post steroid treatment for any live ones.

I did a bit of research, because I was convinced there should also be a timescale for receiving vaccinations after a blood transfusion.  All avenues confirmed that vaccinations should not be given until 6 months after a transfusion.  Not to mention the varying timescales quoted for giving vaccinations after IVIG!  But all my hospital ever referred to was the steroid treatment, I guess because that is an immuno-suppressant.  But what of the other things? Had they forgotten what she had been given? I felt uneasy with the advice, so I sat on it for a while.

At a follow-up appointment with Rheumatology, I asked about whether Freya should be vaccinated against Chicken Pox (Varicella).  The doctor said that in the UK we only vaccinate children who are at high risk of contracting the disease.  I said that whilst Freya wasn’t at higher risk of contracting chicken pox, the potential consequences of her contracting the disease whilst taking aspirin could be catastrophic.  He agreed to take the issue away, and on the 19th August 2015 I received a letter confirming that they believed it was “reasonable for Freya to receive vaccination against Chicken Pox, both in relation to the issue regarding ongoing treatment with aspirin and the small degree of risk of developing [RS] and also the small risks that Freya may require treatment with immunosuppression therapy in the future…”.   Freya had been weaned off steroid therapy a lot more quickly than originally planned when the gastrointestinal bleeding started. From memory, it was the 8th July 2015 when she took her last oral prednisolone; that meant she could have the live vaccines, including CP, anytime after the 8th October 2015; “…it is important that Freya does not receive this until at least 3 months following…the last day Freya received the steroid treatment…”.  I still felt uneasy, and decided to wait until our next follow-up appointment to discuss.  It was at that appointment that I shared all the research that I had done, and got a referral to Immunology.  I had to wait until yesterday for that appointment.

I wonder if now might be a good time to share what I have learned, from the internet (reliable sources, like the NHS and the American Heart Association) and from medical professionals from London to California…

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From the list above, all vaccines are inactive with the exception of the following live vaccines – Rotavirus, MMR, Children’s Flu vaccine (note that for the children’s flu vaccine, the nasal spray is live, however there is an injectable inactive flu virus available).

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These are just a few examples of the responses I received from medical professionals, and I can say that my internet research has thrown up much the same; anything from 3 months to 12 months.  Helpful, right!  My gut feeling was telling me I should err on the side of caution, and follow the advice of the US doctor who is considered the leading Kawasaki Specialist in the World – she calls herself a ‘Kawasakiologist’ and I believe she deserves the title.  Our GP agreed that Freya qualified for the injectable (inactive) flu vaccine.  My decision was made.  Well, kind of.  I had decided I wanted to get Freya caught up on the inactive vaccines immediately, then discuss the issue of the live ones with our Immunologist.  Chances were, by the time we got any decisions we would be nearing that 12 month mark anyway, so it was a win-win.  But our ever cautious GP decided that if we were speaking to an Immunologist anyway, there was no harm in waiting for that meeting before we started the immunisation process, and he felt happier to wait for clear direction from her.  So, again we would have to wait.

So yesterday we had that appointment with the Immunologist.  I was all geared up to go in and cover all my questions, but unfortunately an hour’s wait with a baby that has decided that a high pitched squeal is the best means of communication made the whole process a little trickier than I had anticipated!  The doctor was the Infectious Diseases Consultant who treated Freya when she arrived at the Children’s Hospital on day 8 of her illness.  That was nice, as I had the opportunity to thank her for her compassion, support and tireless determination to get to the root of Freya’s condition (especially as I was quite a difficult ‘customer’ who asked lots and lots of questions, and even accused them of breaking Freya’s heart at one point!)  She seemed genuinely pleased to see Freya looking so well.  She received the news that we had seen some improvement in her coronaries since the acute stage of the illness with a broad smile, and she was happy that Freya has not had anything more than one little cough and cold since her hospitalisation.  I expected her to call me a muppet for being a cautious and over-protective mother, but instead she said she felt I was doing the right things, which was reassuring.

I came away from the appointment with a solution, individualised for Freya.  I still don’t have a definitive answer about the timescales related to immunising after IVIG.  But then why would I?  The fact that I can quote at least 5 different timescales from medical papers and journals across the world tells me a lot of them are guessing. I’ve read that medics aren’t completely sure why IVIG even works in the case of KD – they are still trying to understand what causes the illness in the first place, so I guess it would be near impossible to understand why the treatment works. It just does (in most cases).  The Immunologist told me that they deal with children who have compromised immunity as a result of a bone marrow transplant, for example.  Those children are given immunisations  in line with the hospital guidelines and they do not wait 12 months.  That said, she agreed that they had learned more than they previously knew about KD from Freya.  Presenting at just 7 weeks old, and having had no previous immunisations, she is a bit of an unusual case.  So they have agreed to follow a similar process to that of a bone marrow transplant patient.

What are they going to do?

They have taken blood samples from Freya in order to test her body’s immunity status.  They will be testing Freya’s immunoglobulin levels, and lymphocytes (T-cells).  Depending on those results (and I am sorry, I didn’t ask what result they would be expecting or what a low or high result might indicate, or whether there was a chance they might just be reading ‘borrowed’ antibodies as a result of the circulating IVIG – I will ask that when we discuss results), they will start the routine inactive vaccines and the injectible (inactive) flu vaccine.  After a period of time following those (I think she said 6 weeks), Freya’s immunoglobulins will be tested again to check her immune response to those vaccines.  Assuming they get the right result (whatever that might be), they will then progress to live vaccines, including chicken pox.  If we get moving quickly, Freya may even make it in time to have the MMR vaccination at precisely the right time.  I have some decisions to make about Rotavirus (which I believe is time-specific so she may already be considered too late) and Meningitis B, as both have stated increased risks of contracting Kawasaki Disease in the patient information.  I know it is incredibly rare for KD to reoccur, but show me one parent of a kid with a rare condition who finds that word reassuring.

Yes, I am still confused as to what the right answer is about timescales for vaccinations post treatment Kawasaki Disease.  But, I think I have a great solution for me, for Freya.  Rather than guess based on the varied guidelines out there, we are going to take a look at Freya as an individual.  Actually take a look inside and see what is going on, and make the decisions based on what she tells us.  The Immunologist has always said that Freya showed them the path to a diagnosis, and that they learned so much from her.  Seems she is going to teach them something new.  And as much as I probably do their heads in with my questions and powerpoint presentations, I do know that they respect me for it and that they are luckily not too arrogant as to discount this mum’s research and opinions.  She actually said it was helpful and told Freya that she is as well as she is because of her “amazing mum”. I don’t know about that, but in a sea of negativity and low moments, I’ll take that right now.

Whatever I learn from this experience, I will share.  Every Kawasaki case is different, no matter how similar some of the stories might seem.  No wonder it is a tricky one to spot, diagnose, treat and understand.  I hope in my lifetime they find the cause so I can finally understand why this happened to us, to my little Peanut.

Our Rheumatologist said that the subject of immunisations in these cases is “contentious” and currently being debated.  Another said that “guidance is not clear as there are no trials/studies to guide us for this exact situation…” and “…is a balance involving unknowns…”  He gave his opinion and advice, stating that “…there are other equally ‘correct’ versions too!”  No shit!

I’ll leave you with a few of the comments that I received from KD specialists here and in the US, which might help to dispel a few myths relating to IVIG and immunity.

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And in case you can’t read that, I have pasted below:

“The reason not to give live vaccines after IVIG treatment (has nothing to do with steroids) is that your daughter has received antibodies poled from 10,000 adult blood donors who have antibodies against the viruses in the live vaccines. Therefore, the live viruses are inactivated by the circulating IVIG that is still detectable 11 months after administration…it is not dangerous to give the live vaccines…it’s just that they will be inactivated and the body will not make a lasting response. All killed vaccines are fine to give once your child is past the acute phase. 3 months sounds like a good period to wait. All live viruses vaccines should be delayed one year after IVIG.”

“We don’t usually stop aspirin when we give chicken pox vaccine for our [patients] with serious aneurysms. The risk of Reyes’ Syndrome was associated with higher doses of aspirin and not the very low dose used for the anti-platelet effect in KD patients with aneurysms. There is no data to support the notion that low dose aspirin is a risk. That being said, Reyes’ Syndrome [is] terrible and it should be easy to stop aspirin for 2 weeks. Clopidogrel can be substituted for aspirin during that time.”

“Your daughter’s immunity is not compromised by KD. It can be compromised by steroids, but only while actually taking the steroids. Your daughter’s immunity has been boosted by the IVIG she received so she is quite protected from all routine infections for the next year. There is no evidence that children with KD have immune defects that make them more susceptible to routine infectious agents.”

“…The issue of when to vaccinate children who have received…IVIG…arises because the antibodies present in the IVIG may prevent an adequate response to live vaccines. This is less clear in the case of vaccines that do not contain live organisms. The second issue is that steroids may diminish immune response and also make live vaccines dangerous. If Freya has been off steroids for 3 months she can go ahead with all the killed vaccines…”

“…The IVIG may prevent live vaccines working for over 6 months, and may interfere with MMR vaccine working. However MMR is not needed until after 11 months of age so unless there is a local measles outbreak she does not need MMR until the normal age…”

“Rotavirus vaccine is supposed to be given before 24 weeks of age which Freya may be beyond; it is probably not worth giving it at this stage…”

“…Varicella vaccine [chicken pox] should be given but as both steroids and IVIG may prevent it working I would suggest waiting at least 6 months from the IVIG and steroids before giving it…”