A 3-year-old girl dies after a seizure

Little Ava Akers, of Shropshire in the UK, died after she collapsed following seizures, fell into a coma and was transferred to a children's clinic.

This is where the doctors told the Akers that an "Ava they knew was gone" when it was badly damaged in the brain. She died at home.

Her parents, Phill and Helen, have now decided to launch a charity called Ava's Angels in her memory, bringing food and essentials to the Birmingham Children's Hospital to help families in moments. the most difficult.

Phill, who works for a global digital computing company, talked about the tragic death of his little angel "in perfect health".

HOLIDAY DREAM TURNS TO THE NIGHTMARE

"We had a great holiday in the Maldives in March 2017: catching a sea plane for the island where we were staying, watching rays being fed, catching hermit crabs on the beach and go snorkeling, which she immediately took me to say.

"We were at the airport on the mainland, about to fly back to Dubai, and then to Birmingham, when we asked her if she wanted to pick something from the souvenir shop as a souvenir.

"She dropped it, which was different from Ava because she was never clumsy. Then she dropped to the ground after an atonic crisis. His eyes rolled back, his arms stretched and his whole body shook.

"She was choking, I had never seen a child have a seizure before, it was so scary that I thought she was going to die.

"We were moved to a larger hospital and spent a week there. She came back to normal by singing, dancing, eating and watching Trolls' iPad movie – she loved it.

"The doctors thought she had a throat infection and urine. The compound effect can cause seizures in children under five, but they said that she would be fine. We felt so lucky.

A turning point for the worst

"But this afternoon, Ava felt really bad, started having hallucinations and crying a lot. She lost balance and was unable to walk.

"The doctors did an MRI and lumbar puncture to examine the cerebrospinal fluid in her head and make sure it was not meningitis. They showed me MRI and I could see that it was awful. "

At this point, Ava fell into a coma and his insurance company organized a medical evacuation to a private hospital in Bangkok.

Phill said: "It is here that she was diagnosed with Epstein Barr Virus (EBV) encephalitis, a form of glandular fever that, in a minutia of cases, penetrates the blood into the brain, slowing it down and causing catastrophic damage. in a few hours.

"It's very rare in children under five, there are only about 20 children in the world who have it and 18 are completely cured. They said that Ava would be one of those who would recover and we hoped everything would be fine.

"THE AVA YOU KNOW IS PARTY"

Three weeks later, they were repatriated to the United Kingdom on a medical plane and then transported to an intensive care unit in Stoke.

Although she began to breathe again, she never opened her eyes and spent three and a half months recovering.

"The doctors sat us down and said," Ava will not recover from that, she will never lead a normal life. The Ava you know is gone.

"We said that, maybe if we took her home, it might help. They said it was worth trying, because sometimes if you recover a child in his environment, it can help him to rehabilitate himself.

"But we did not realize at that time that she was blind and deaf brain damage. His eyes were perfect but his brain could not calculate the signals.

"After four months of hospitalization at the hospital, the doctors asked us if we wanted to start palliative care or if we wanted a survival machine to keep it alive.

"We decided to go into hospice palliative care because we thought it was the kindest thing we could do when you have a child who is so badly ill.

"We kept bringing her home and, it's home, on July 29, that our beautiful daughter Ava died."

Inspired by Ava and aware of the importance of helping children while caring for them, they launched Ava's Angels in March 2018 to help families of sick children while in hospital.

This article originally appeared in The Sun and has been republished with permission.