Constance died at the age of 6 months after contracting a severe form of bacterial meningitis. His mother believes that the doctors were late in diagnosing the disease.
A grieving mother. Flavie lost her 6-month-old daughter, Constance, at the end of November after she contracted meningitis. The mother believes that the Saint-Nazaire hospital, where she was taken care of, was slow to diagnose her child’s illness. Flavie will file a complaint against the hospital, according to local media.
“She was not well”
Little Constance began to develop the first symptoms of the disease at the end of October. Caught with a fever, the baby has a temperature of 38.5°C and does not seem to be in good shape, according to his mother who lives in Saint-André-des-Eaux, in Loire-Atlantique.
Flavie normally puts her daughter to bed at night, but a few hours later, the little one is seized by intense vomiting. “I had never seen that, even with my grandma,” she says.
The next day, Flavie sees her amorphous daughter and is worried. “I felt that she was not well, she had puffy eyes,” she confides to West France.
A Doliprane and an anti-emetic
She therefore goes to the emergency room of the Saint-Nazaire hospital, in Loire-Atlantique, but deplores the light care of her daughter.
“A doctor auscultated her vaguely: he just felt her stomach”, she denounces to Actu.fr.
The practitioner gives a doliprane and an anti-emetic to the baby. He tells his mother that they can leave if Constance does not vomit within the next two hours, for lack of space to keep the baby longer under observation. Constance’s situation remaining stable, they leave.
But once the emergency left, the baby vomits again and has swollen eyes. The next day, seeing that her daughter still had a fever and was not eating, Flavie called SOS Médecin.
Quickly arriving on the spot, the practitioner examines the baby and, without telling Flavie what her daughter is suffering from, calls her to go immediately to the emergency room and gives her a letter so that she has priority.
A severe form of meningitis
On the spot, Constance is immediately taken care of by doctors, but an exit from the nurse angers Flavie. “The doctor had warned us that there was a good chance that you would come back today,” the caregiver told her.
“I was flabbergasted,” she says.
Scanner, lumbar puncture… Little Constance is subjected to a battery of examinations. The practitioners end up explaining to Flavie that they suspect the baby is suffering from bacterial pneumococcal meningitis, one of the most serious forms of the disease.
“We were told to give him a last kiss”
The baby must be immediately transferred to the intensive care unit of the Nantes University Hospital, the parents not being authorized to accompany him. “We were told to give her a last kiss because when (we would see her again) she would be intubated and in a coma”, sighs Flavie.
“We weren’t ready to hear that kind of stuff at all. It was a huge shock,” she says.
In a coma, Constance was hospitalized for two weeks and underwent a major operation. Despite the doctors’ efforts, Constance’s health did not show any marked improvement and her brain was largely damaged. She is finally disconnected at the request of her parents and dies on November 29.
“Not treated in time” for his mother
For Flavie, the death of her daughter is the consequence of poor medical care during her first visit to the emergency room.
“Her coma was caused by the inflammation of her brain due to meningitis which was not treated in time”, she denounces, while recalling that her daughter was up to date with all her vaccines.
“If she had had her antibiotic treatment on Monday, October 31, (…) she might still be alive today,” she said.
She will file a complaint against the Saint-Nazaire hospital for manslaughter. The establishment, contacted by Actu.fr, did not wish to react.
