Her heart stopped beating: I was sure meningitis had taken my baby
26.11.10
One year ago, Taylor-Rae's mum Sonia Guerrero, 23, watched helplessly as her precious daughter's heart and then her lungs failed in the space of 48 hours.
Her tiny body was ravaged during a gruelling two-month spell at St George's Hospital in Tooting, south London, but she has now fully recovered and is able to play happily with eight-month-old brother Ollie.
Full-time mum Sonia realised something was wrong when she noticed a change in Taylor-Rae's behaviour last November.
She says: "She was really grumpy and off her food. I was really worried. I called NHS Direct, who diagnosed swine flu and prescribed Tamiflu. But the next morning she was almost back to her normal self so I assumed she had been wrongly diagnosed and was just teething."
But a week later, her condition dramatically declined. Sonia says: "The following Sunday morning, I found her crying. She was trying to stand up in her cot but kept slumping back down. She looked so frightened. Her eyes were so wide and vacant - she looked possessed."
Sonia, who lives in Morden, south London with her partner Andrew Hall, 23, a decorator, soon noticed Taylor-Rae had other symptoms. She says: "We noticed a bruise on her chest and above her right eye. I thought she must have banged into the cot. But when I examined her further we noticed a pin-prick rash all over her body. I called an ambulance immediately.
"While we were waiting, Taylor-Rae wouldn't settle. When her eyes rolled into the back of her head, I began to panic.
"When they arrived, the paramedics did a 'tumbler test', rolling a glass over her rash to see if it would fade. Unfortunately, the marks didn't disappear which is a sign of meningitis."
Read the full feature on Taylor-Rae, whose family support Meningitis UK, in The Sun (external website)
MeningitisUK · Registered Charity No.1076774
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