Aoibhe 's Meningitis Story
The 2nd of April 2008 saw the lives of Siobhan and Noel Carroll turned completely upside down, when the ultimate horror visited them, the death of a child.
Their eldest child Aoibhe, who had turned four in January of that year, woke up in the middle of the night of the 1st of April, with vomiting and diarrhoea. Noel was at home alone with Aoibhe and her brother Eimhin, who was two years old.
Siobhán, who was pregnant with their third child, was experiencing some difficulties related to her pregnancy and so was in hospital for overnight observation. Noel comforted Aoibhe, changed her and when she fell asleep again, tucked her back into bed and rang Siobhán in the hospital to let her know Aoibhe had been sick. Siobhan was worried that one of the kids was sick, but kids get sick all the time. She had spoken to Aoibhe on the phone earlier in the evening before she went to bed and she was in great form, telling her she loved her and she would see her in the morning, so she wasn't that worried. However, Aoibhe got sick again later in the night, setting off alarm bells with Noel and he called the doctor, who told him it sounded like Aoibhe had a vomiting bug.
As her condition deteriorated during the night, he rang the doctor a couple of times and followed the advice given. At this stage, Noel was sitting on the couch in the sitting room of their house in Oranmore in the early hours of the morning, cradling Aoibhe in his arms. They were watching cartoons around 5am, when Aoibhe’s eyes closed and Noel thought she was drifting off to sleep, but then he noticed her lips had started to turn blue. He immediately rang an ambulance and phoned Siobhán to tell her Aoibhe was not well and there was an ambulance coming out. Siobhan was obviously very worried then and spoke to Noel when the ambulance arrived and he told her that they were working on her. Siobhan didn’t know what he meant by working on her as she assumed she only had a vomiting bug.
What Siobhán didn’t know was by the time the ambulance had arrived to the house, Aoibhe had stopped breathing. The ambulance crew worked furiously on the little girl and she was rushed into hospital. As Siobhan was being kept in for the night for observation, when Noel told her that Aoibhe was on the way in to the hospital in an ambulance, she made her way over to accident and emergency to wait for them. Siobhan still remembers standing outside in the dark. It was the middle of the night, so it was very quiet and off in the distance she could hear a siren and remembers saying to herself, "God it sounds as if someone is very sick, God love them," without realizing it was the ambulance rushing Aoibhe into hospital.
The ambulance pulled up, the doors opened and someone just ran out straight past her into accident and emergency, followed by the ambulance crew and Noel with Aoibhe. But it was too late, Aoibhe was gone, an aggressive strain of meningitis taking her life.
Life as they knew it changed that day.
Four weeks after Aoibhe died, Siobhán gave birth to their son Noah, and their youngest child Sophie was born in December 2009 but the journey to where they are now 16 years later was one of pain, coping with loss and creating Aoibhe’s legacy that was ACT for Meningitis.