AOIBHE was a new year baby, born at 12.06am on January 1st, 2004. Her photo was on the front page of the Connacht Tribune and she was the second baby born in Ireland that year. So we start every year on her birthday – every new year without her – and that is unbelievably hard.
Siobh
á
n Carroll
:
I remember the day we came home from her funeral and I closed the front door, and I felt like I was the only woman in Ireland who had ever lost a child. That's how isolated you feel, even though you know that you are not alone.
Aoibhe had turned four that January of 2008, and I was expecting our third child in April when I had to go into hospital in Galway for observation. Noel was at home with Aoibhe and our second child, Eimhin, then two, when she began vomiting and having diarrhoea. He rang to let me know. I had spoken to her earlier that evening and she was in great form.
Noel rang a doctor several times that night, and it sounded like a vomiting bug so he followed instructions. He was cradling her in his arms on the couch at about 5am and watching cartoons with her when she began to fall asleep, but then he noticed that her lips had turned blue. He called an ambulance, and phoned me to tell me that it was on the way.
She died within an hour, and I never got to hold her or to say goodbye,which is very hard to take. It was an aggressive form of meningitis and it took her in just six hours.
Eimhin shared a room with Aoibhe, and we had to tell him that holy God wanted Aoibhe to live with him. Eimhin was very angry with that and would ask us to get a ladder so he could climb up to heaven and see her. He would ask if she would come back and play with him sometime and, if she did, could she take off her angel clothes and put on her normal clothes.
She was so looking forward to starting school in Oranmore, where she had been in the naíonra. She was a great little character – we would go shopping together, and she loved clothes. I still can’t go into shops where there might be clothes for girls of her age.
So it was the lack of awareness about it that made us realise we should set up ACT for Meningitis. We began with nothing except for a pen and notepad, and then it started to grow.
In August 2011. Linda Burke, who owns Level One offices on the Tuam road in Galway, said she wanted to support us and gave us an office space for a year.
People donated laptops, a printer and filing cabinets, and we had our first fundraiser and held a launch in Galway with businessman Pádraig Ó Céidigh and singer Julie Feeney.
Signs and symptoms
Most people are told to look out for a rash, but it doesn't always produce one, and there are a number of signs and symptoms.
So we came up with the idea of an awareness card listing these for both meningitis and septicaemia, which we want to distribute to every creche and school and doctor’s surgery.
We haven't any Government funding, but we did get to talk to Minister for Health Dr James Reilly recently outside the Dáil and appealed to him to introduce a vaccination programme for meningitis B, because Ireland has one of the highest rates of it in Europe.
Ironically, the vaccine for pneumococcal meningitis came in in September 2008, and Aoibhe had died the previous April.
Noel Carroll
:
Meningitis will never go away, but the vaccine could save children's lives and can reduce the serious side effects in survivors. Viral meningitis can present like flu, but we would be advising parents to trust their instincts and, when they ring for an ambulance, to state that they suspect meningitis. That means that the ambulance control will send out an advanced paramedic who can administer penicillin if necessary.
We offer counselling and play therapy, and I really feel I could talk to so many people, help so many people, who might now be going through what we went through. I just feel I could reach out to them and be there for them. In fact, since Aoibhe’s death, we have met so many people who lost someone or were close to someone who was affected by meningitis, and their grief is as if it happened yesterday because they never got the support at the time.
Siobhá n and Noel Carroll: Aoibhe would have made her First Communion last year, and the class she would have started with at school in Gaelscoil de hÍde in Oranmore had white balloons for her on their day. The school has a fundraiser at Christmas and they call it Bronntanas Aoibhe.
Eimhin is now seven, and Noah has just turned five, and her younger sister, Sophie, who will be four in December, is starting in the naíonra this autumn.We take one day at a time, one step at a time, because there are days when you think you might be okay, but then it just catches you and takes your breath away.
For more information on signs and symptoms of meningitis and septicaemia and the work of ACT for Meningitis, see website actformeningitis.ie
