Mum's warning after common cold nearly kills her 18-month-old son
Brock Wilton-Weaver is much like most toddlers – he’s cheeky, loves his teddy bear and is always full of energy.
But the thing that sets the 18-month-old apart from other kids is that as a baby who was born premature, a common cold can be deadly.
The seriousness of catching a simple cold was made frighteningly evident last month when Brock became sick with the seemingly common illness.
Within two days of showing symptoms of having caught a cold, Brock was admitted to his local hospital in Hutt Valley, in New Zealand’s Wellington region.
From there, his lungs needed to be paralysed so he could sleep — thereby giving his tiny body its best chance of fighting the virus that had quickly developed from a cold into bronchiolitis and then pneumonia.
“It was literally a common cold, with a cough and a runny nose –– not even the flu or anything. Just a normal, common cold but then it turned into [bronchiolitis],” Brock’s mum Abby Wilton told Yahoo News Australia.
As he slept he was transferred to Wellington’s general hospital and then, with his condition worsening, he was flown by Life Flight to Auckland’s Star Ship Hospital.
His family then spent 10 agonising days at his bedside, temporarily gripped by their worst nightmares when it looked like he might not wake up.
“We were just trying to cope with him lying there lifeless... and there were times we didn’t think he was going to survive because he wasn’t getting any better,” Ms Wilton told Yahoo News Australia.
During the course of those days that “felt like forever” to his family, his mum recalled popping out of Brock’s room for a moment and then returning to find medical staff surrounding his bed because he had set the alarms off on the machines supporting him.
“It was pretty terrifying to walk into the room and [see that],” she said, explaining this occurred frequently because the slightest change to Brock’s conditions or position triggered a bad reaction that set off his machines.
“There were a couple of times there where I didn’t think we were going to have a good outcome.”
Eventually though, the toddler’s condition began to improve.
Hospital staff reduced the amount of medication he was on so he would wake up.
When he did, the first thing Brock asked for was his teddy.
But the family’s hospital stay still wasn’t over as the 18-month-old had awoken with an addiction to the morphine he was administered to keep him asleep.
“He was shaking, he was nearly having seizures he was shaking that much and sweating,” Ms Wilton said.
“They had to keep giving him small amounts of morphine [to wean him off it].”
It was understandably the cause of considerable relief when the toddler was finally given the all-clear to go home with his family about two weeks ago.
No such thing as ‘just a cold’ for preemies
According to Brock’s mum, his ordeal is far from unusual for a premature baby.
In fact, while her toddler was in the Auckland hospital, she estimated half the ward was made up of premature babies dealing with bronchiolitis.
There’s no such thing as “just a cold” for children like Brock, she explained, adding one of the biggest challenges parents of preemies face is trying to make people understand just how deadly common illnesses are to babies whose lungs haven’t developed properly.
“Even some of my best friends don’t realise that a common cold to you is really bad to Brock,” she said, adding: “But then I was the same before having a preterm baby.”
In Australia, about eight per cent of babies are born prematurely.
In New Zealand numbers are higher, with about 10 per cent of babies being born premature (before 37 weeks’ gestation) every year.
In Australia, more than 90 per cent survive, but as their lungs won’t be fully developed until they’re three years old, colds are a far more common and far more serious affair than they are to full-term babies.
In Brock’s case, he was back in hospital with bronchitis a month after he was released following his birth.
Since then, he’s contracted it another five times — including his most recent, almost fatal bout, which was the most serious.
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