LUCA’S STORY
The 6th of January was a normal day for Luca and his family. Luca showed no symptoms of being unwell and was put to bed at around 7 o’clock. Luca’s parents were up through the night, as usual, taking Luca to toilet. About an hour after his last trip to the toilet, Luca’s parents checked on him and found Luca purple from head to toe, with a rash. Within an hour the horrendous disease, Meningococcal Septicaemia, had ravaged every part of his body and left him fighting for his life.
Luca’s parents were faced with the horrendous reality of Luca’s prognosis. Luca was given less than a 3% chance of survival. Yet, Luca pulled through, but not unscathed… Luca spent two weeks in a drug-induced coma in Intensive care. During that time he underwent a huge number of treatments to keep him alive. Fluids and blood were constantly fed into his body to compensate for the fluid and blood loss due to the septicaemia. He was put on dialysis and at his worst had a massive amount of drugs pumped into him, in order to keep him going.
Slowly as the days went on, Luca showed small signs of improvement and the doctors started to reduce drugs levels and changed him from an oscillator to a standard ventilator. He also came off dialysis and each step confirmed that no major damage had been done to his organs.
Luca’s parents now faced the devastating effects of the septicaemia. Luca was black from his hips to his toes and had patches of dead tissue across his shoulders and arms also. He was kept in this condition for as long as possible to see what his body could repair before his first major operation. As the days went on it was clear that Luca’s legs had completely died below the knees and were starting to mummify. No words can describe how bad the damage to his legs looked and the image is something Luca’s parents have tried to blank from their memory.
At the first operation, Luca lost both of his legs and all of his tissue and skin below his hips. He has massive skin, tissue and muscle loss across his arms and shoulders and is now fighting to save his knees, which have been severely damaged.
