Oliver Martin

It was the start of July 2016, my 11-month-old son Oliver started showing signs of having a cold and just being generally unwell. Less than 24 hours later he had started to deteriorate, I called 111 (we are from New Zealand). Oliver got rushed to hospital where he was later diagnosed with pneumonia after waiting around for 6 hours. (Sepsis and Pneumonia) We were sent home with only pain relief, no antibiotics.

The next morning I could tell that Oliver was still very unwell so we visited our GP, who said he was fine and again we were sent home. Fast forward a few more hours I called 111 again and I had to fight the Ambulance officer to take Oliver into the hospital. We were once again mucked around for 8 hours this time before finally being transferred my ambulance to a larger more equipped hospital an hour away, because our local hospital had no idea what was wrong with Oliver.

Once we arrived at the bigger hospital things started moving pretty quickly, they discovered that Oliver had fluid in his chest, so decided that he need to go into theater and have a chest drain placed. Once he was in theater, they drained 250ml of pus from his chest. Once they done this though, he started to crash, the severity of his illness was a lot worse than the doctors realised and we were called in to say goodbye to Oliver.

Thankfully they managed to stabilize Oliver, and we were then air lifted to Starship Hospital, New Zealand’s specialist pediatric hospital. Once we finally arrived there the staff told us that they had done all they could for Oliver and that we should prepare ourselves to say goodbye. We still had no idea what was wrong with Oliver. It wasn’t until the next morning that a doctor sat us down and explained sepsis to us. Oliver however was in septic shock and most of his organs were failing. However after 7 days of being in a coma on life support and a further two weeks in hospital Oliver made a miraculous recovery, and was allowed home. Sepsis is not very well known in New Zealand, the ambulance staff, GP and the staff at our local hospital had no idea that Oliver had sepsis. We almost lost our wee boy due to the lack of knowledge and awareness of sepsis in New Zealand. Something I am hoping to change.

Source: Lanelle Conner (Oliver's mother)