February 19, 1988 - May 13, 2005
Irishtown, N.B.
Our nightmare began on mother's day 2005, our daughter woke up and said she wasn't feeling good. She had worked the night before and had gone out with her best friend & her boy friend Adam afterward, I assumed she was tired and was beginning with a bit of a cold.
She loved being rubbed so she said her back was aching and would like a back rub, I obliged. She watched TV for awhile and then went back to bed, she told me she was cold so I heated up some bean bags which I brought to her. She threw up for awhile and couldn't keep anything down but I kept bringing her water as I didn't want her to get too dehydrated. After a while, she seemed to be getting a bit better and she spoke to a few friends on her cell phone. She would get up and go back to bed for the rest of the day. At 10:00 p.m. her father and I were going to bed and we went to her room to see how she was doing, she said o.k. and we told her you'll have a better day tomorrow. I told her to keep her door open and if she needed me to just call and I'll be there.
At 12:00a.m. I heard a big bang, and jumped out of bed to find her on the floor at the door to her room. She told me her head had hit the door and that her head was aching. I called for her father and he came running. The center of her face seemed a darker shade than the rest, and he looked at me and said that's not good. Let's take her in to the hospital. He went to get dress as I helped her to the washroom, she was weak. When she finished we took her back and sat her on her bed and dressed her to go.
Within minutes they had her in the trauma room. Doctors came to us and told us we had a sick child. Of course we had a sick child, that's why we were in there, but never did we think that we had a dying child. They did a spinal tap and when it was done she told us it was the most painful thing she had ever had. We told her how they were going to find out what was wrong with her and they'd have her feeling better in no time, I told her they're going to keep you in here for a day or two but don't worry we wont leave you. We stayed with her and talked while they were hooking her up with intervenes, I think I counted 10 different machines all hooked to her.
She talked with us all through the night, by Monday afternoon they told us they were putting her in a coma as they were giving her the needle, she never came back out. So many things were happening then its hard to remember it all, the doctors wanted to know, where she had been, who she was with, etc. They wanted to know all her contacts the last 48 hours, so on the phone, I got telling her friends to come to the hospital to get pills or a shot, I don't quite remember. We stayed by her side day in day out waiting for a dialysis machine which never came, by Friday morning we were told she was brain dead and that afternoon all machines were removed. Diane leaves behind two older brother her dad & I. Life for us will never again be the same.
I don't remember being told what she had, so I asked but was told it didn't matter at this point but insisted on knowing, when they told me meningitis and that it was contagious, I made my son go to her school and tell her principal. Under no circumstances did I want another family to go threw what we were going through.
The principal called the papers and television and because of the public outcry over 22,000 students were immunized in New Brunswick in May & June 2005.
Patricia Spicer
spicerpatricia@hotmail.com
