"Our family’s life has been destroyed now my son is gone."
What started as an ordinary day became anything but when Hayley’s 17-year-old son Michael was sick and developed a purple rash on his forehead and nose.
Michael had developed meningococcal septicaemia and despite the best efforts of stepdad Marc and ambulance crews they were unable to save him, as Hayley, from Shrewsbury in Shropshire, tells us here.
“It started as an ordinary day. My son Michael had just finished a 5-11pm shift at Nando’s on the Friday 22nd of November. On the way home he rang to tell me he had stopped at the cinema to be sick. I told him to get home safely and go to bed and sleep it off.
“I heard him get up in the night to be sick, so I went to see him and told him to try and go back to sleep. The next morning at about 12pm I went into his room to let him know I was getting ready for work and to see how he was. I told him to try and get some more sleep.
“After getting dressed I went in to say goodbye, I was off to work. I took a look at him and said ‘that’s very bad acne on your forehead.’ I ran my hand over it and Michael went ‘ouch’.
Worse than we thought
"I took a picture of his forehead and sent the picture to one of my friends. When she replied I was in the taxi on my way to work. She told me I should ring 111 as it looked like an allergic reaction to something.
"She messaged my husband and within 10 minutes of being at work my husband messaged me and said it is worse than we thought and that he was ringing 999. He also said he was doing CPR on Michael, his stepson.
“I ran out of work all the way home. When I got home there were three ambulance cars, two ambulances and the air ambulance had just landed. Twenty minutes after getting home they asked me to come and say goodbye to my son Michael as they could not restart his heart.
‘I said goodbye and they took him to hospital for tests. Later they rang me and said that I could come to the hospital to see him.
“While I was at the hospital they said we have done blood tests and we can say it was meningococcal septicaemia that he had died from. On the Friday when he was sick the infection was killing him from the inside out. My son passed away on Saturday the 23rd of November 2024 at 14:06."
