Meningitis takes mother of four
Her eyes glisten as she remembers the last few moments with her daughter. It was almost as if she could still feel the frail little hand clutched tightly between her own hands.
A mother and grandmother now stands heartbroken as she thinks back on the deterioration of her child’s body after she was diagnosed with Meningitis.
Ms Renée Barnard passed away on January 11, after a battle with the illness that stole her from her family. Barnard, who lived in Middelburg, was admitted to the hospital on December 29 after she was found passed-out at her house. Her mother, who wished to remain anonymous, told that she had known her daughter was sick for some time. “She complained about headaches and aching muscles, but thought she only had the flu or that it could be stress.” The severe fever and muscle-pains continued as Barnard prolonged her visit to the doctor, hoping the ‘flu’ would come to pass.
Barnard’s mother, a resident in eMalahleni, only saw her daughter in the hospital – after she fell ill – and said that she was shocked by what she found. “I looked at her and could barely even recognise her. She was my daughter and also not my daughter,” she recalls. “Her eyes were glassy and she was red all over from the fever.”
Barnard’s last days in the hospital were hard for her mother to see. “She was unresponsive and when I asked her a question she would only squeeze my hand a little.” The mother and grandmother to the four children Barnard had left behind, looked down with the grief still etched on her face.
“She was a happy girl.”
Wishing to save other families from the pain of losing someone due to Meningitis, Barnard’s mother warns that anyone with symptoms of fever, headaches and muscle pains, must see a doctor.
An early diagnosis is critical, especially for young children, and must be treated immediately.
