The Worst...

Two summers ago a couple took their baby daughter to hospital worried about a fever and sickness. They pointed out that her nappy was dry - which if you know these things is worrying.

I've been there with E when she was less than a year old, and I have never had such a desperate night as the night I spent with her in a hospital before they were able to confirm that she did not, as we feared, have meningitis. Inability to pass urine is one of the early signs of the illness, and it was only after E passed water near dawn that we knew we were likely to be spared this terrible affliction.

For this family though, the outcome was not good or right. The hospital said they could find nothing wrong with her and sent her home. She continued to be ill and when the parents noticed the tell-tale mauve spots on her back that would not go away when pressed with a glass - the standard test - she was rushed back to the local hospital and thence to St. Mary's Paddington to their specialist meningitis unit.

The doctors and nurses there were able to save her life but at a terrible cost - she developed septicaemia in her limbs and in order that she might not die her arms were amputated below the elbows and her legs above the knee.

Our local paper carried the most heart-rending of photographs of her recovering in hospital after surgery, sitting up and smiling but with bandages where her limbs should have been.

The NHS, though saving her life finally - and who knows whether earlier intervention might have saved her ravaged body - were not able to provide her with the prosthetics that she needed to learn as much mobility and facility as she might. All that they could offer were rigid prosthetics, whereas what she needed were specialist flexible artificial legs and arms that could help her achieve her potential and give her the best quality of life.

Local fund raising has enabled her family to buy these limbs privately and you may have seen her beautiful shining face in the newspapers the other week as she took her first steps.

Bad enough you might think that the NHS was not prepared to provide these necessary and higher-cost artificial limbs and that her parents - who have paid their taxes all their lives - had to rely on charitable fund raising.

But worse, far worse, was yet to come. Her local PCT has just announced that because she has privately supplied prosthetics they are no longer under an obligation to provide her with physiotherapy and support, and have withdrawn their services.

I cannot think of anything more sickening, immoral and disgusting than this action. I loathe the people who have taken this decision and I pray God her family and campaigners will force them to change their wretched Godless minds.

If you want to know more about this then link to:

http://www.elliemay.info/

It's not up to date - as of today - with the latest developments, but it is there to read.