The Rory Staunton Foundation for Sepsis Prevention

I am a mother who lost a child who could have been saved.

One Wednesday in March of 2012 my son came home from school with two band aids on his arm. He excitedly told me that he had skidded when chasing a basketball and that the gym teacher placed the band aids on his arm. Hurray! I said, well done. A little after midnight I heard him throwing up in the bathroom. When I brought him back to bed he complained of leg pain. I rubbed his leg and eased him back to sleep. The next morning he woke with a fever and we called his pediatrician who agreed to see him. Although she recorded a fever of 102 degrees, a 140 pulse, severe leg pain, blotchy skin and 36 breaths a minute, she insisted to me that there was nothing to worry about, that he had a stomach bug; she said he would be fine and not to worry but to take him to the emergency room for rehydration. At the hospital the ER doctors concurred with the pediatrician's diagnosis and sent us home with a prescription for Zofran, an anti-nausea drug.

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