Callum Mills
Aged 10 days
Strep B meningitis survivor
My partner and I had our little boy through fertility treatment ICSI as we were told we couldn't naturally have children of our own, so it was a miracle when it worked first time and our little boy Callum was born on May 29, 2010. But Callum, unknown to us, was a little wee time bomb as he had strep group B meningitis which was passed on to him through the womb when he was born.
At just 10-days-old Callum had his normal bottle feed at midday and was perfectly normal. We put him down to sleep in his moses basket, awaiting his usual three hourly wake-up call for another bottle.
Three hours came and went and we thought Callum was just starting to sleep for a bit longer. When it came to four hours we decided to wake him. As we went to pick him up we noticed his breathing was very grunty and shallow. He was limp and lifeless when I picked him up. We stripped him off thinking he was hot but both his legs flopped like he was a rag doll. He was turning grey by the second.
We instantly wrapped him up and rushed to our accident and emergency department at Chichester where they wired him up to all sorts of machines. This stage was very much a blur for us as we were so scared.
We were taken to one side and informed that an X-ray showed that our son had seven broken ribs and was extremely poorly. He was rushed to Southampton's intensive care unit.
It wasn't until we got to Southampton that we discovered another X-ray had been done and Callum had no broken bones of any kind and there must have been a fault with the machine at Chichester.
All this was too much for the family as we waited anxiously for the doctors to tell us what was wrong. It felt like a bad nightmare when, finally, we found out that Callum had Group B Strep meningitis.
We were called to see Callum in his intensive care bed at 4am and was told the next 48 hours were critical because he was so ill. Callum had swollen so much that we didn't recognise him. He had probes in his head, a tube stitched into his neck, lines in both hands and a catheter.
We stayed with him every second. He had a lumber puncture and was put on a breathing machine. The doctors were pumping very strong antibiotics into him to kill the bug but told us that he had a bleed on the brain and that there was nothing they could do for the damage it might cause.
After about three days they slowly started taking tubes away in the hope that Callum would do things for himself. Luckily he started breathing for himself when they took his breathing machine away. He stayed in intensive care for a week and was fighting back so well that he was allowed to come back and spend two weeks in a ward at Chichester. Miraculously, he made a full recovery and was allowed home.
This was the beginning of a very worrying time as we constantly checked him wherever he was. Callum is now leading a normal baby life but has regular hospital check-ups and physiotherapy to make sure he's developing normally.
The only worry we have is that Callum's head is misshapen due to the swelling he had – all the plates on bone in his skull have overlapped causing a line at the front and a vary flat spot at the back. He is currently being reviewed by a neurologist because if the bones start to fuse together then he will need an operation to separate them. Until we know anymore we are praying that he won't need an operation and that his skill will sort itself out.
Tracy Sanders and Carl Mills (Callum's parents)
When Tracy's mum Chris broke her knee, the family had the unusual idea of asking people for donations in return for the privilege of signing her cast! They managed to raise £90 towards Meningitis UK's Search 4 a Vaccine Campaign.
MeningitisUK · Registered Charity No.1076774