FULL of beans Thomas Beer celebrated Easter thanks to the outstanding care of doctors and nurses at the Royal Hospital for Children, Bristol. A year ago at almost 18 months he was struck down by a serious infection and his parents, Darrin and Emma, of Teign Village, feared the worst as he battled for his life for a week in intensive care. It was an agonising period for the couple as the brave little chap had 65 different drugs on his chart. At one stage two of the drugs were fighting each other, but once that was sorted, Thomas rapidly made progress to the great relief and delight of his family. On Friday, April 1, last year, the little lad was put to bed at his normal time by his grandma Geraldine Beer, but during the weekend he was not right and was moping around. By the Sunday a rash had appeared, he was not drinking and was shying away from light, immediately springing fears of meningitis. His worried parents drove Thomas to Torbay Hospital, where he was examined. 'They checked him over and said it was just viral and to take him home and give him Calpol and paracetamol and he will be fine, and if we had any concerns to bring him back,' said Emma, who said no-one could give her an answer as to why they sent him home the first time. While there was a baby monitor in his room it wasn't that which made her wake up early on the Monday morning. 'Something made me wake up and I went into see Thomas and found him on his side and his breathing was very shallow. 'I do not know what woke me up, but I am just grateful that I did go into him,' said Emma. Grandparents Vic and Geraldine, who live a stone's throw away, were alerted and took care of the couple's other son, five-year-old Jack, while they rushed Thomas to Accident and Emergency at Torbay Hospital. 'A doctor came in and took one look at him and said to put him in child resuscitation and all of a sudden doctors and paediatricians appeared from everywhere. 'They said they were going to start different tests. They thought it was meningitis,' added Emma. A rapid response team brought a consultant and registrar from the children's hospital in Bristol, and an ambulance followed to transfer him to intensive care in the city. 'He was very poorly and they explained that the next 24 hours were critical and that we could lose him. At that stage they still thought it was meningitis, but on the second day in Bristol they had ruled that out,' she said. The diagnosis was septicaemia, right pneumonia of the upper lobe, and group A streptococcus. Thomas's right lung had fully collapsed – a bacterial drain had removed eight pints of fluid from it – and his left lung had partially collapsed. His spleen was also being attacked by viral streptococcus and there had been a real danger, had it not been caught in time, that it would have attacked his other major organs. To complicate matters his blood was not clotting and Thomas had to have blood transfusions, along with daily Xrays. 'He had so many wires and tubes coming out of him,' said Emma, a 32-year-old former nursery nurse who is a sales assistant at the Plymouth and South West Co-op. With Darrin, a 36-year-old gardener at the Home Farm Trust's Rivendell Centre, Chudleigh, Emma spent the week at the hospital, the couple staying in a relatives room close by, with telephone contact directly to his bedside. 'It took the worry away of what we were going to do, or where we were going to stay,' said Emma. As Thomas was thankfully stabilised and making progress, the couple returned to Teign Village for a day to be with Jack, whom Emma described as being 'marvellous'. 'He dealt with it really well,' she added. After a week in intensive care in Bristol, Thomas was transferred to Torbay Hospital where he spent a further two-and-a-half-weeks. 'They were absolutely fantastic at Bristol. I feel if it was not for the doctors and nurses at Bristol he would not be here now. He had a nurse 24 hours a day monitoring him,' said Emma. At the Tractor and Machinery charity weekend, at Rixey Park, near Chudleigh, in September, Emma and Geraldine ran a bottle stall and raised £200 for the Wallace and Gromit's Grand Appeal on behalf of the Royal Hospital for Children Bristol. A further £201 has been raised from collection boxes in the Palk Arms Hennock, Teign Village Social and Sports Club and the Plymouth and South West Co-op at Trago Mills, and the £401 sent off to the appeal. 'We are looking to continue raising money. It is our way of saying thank-you for saving his life,' said Emma.
