Advertisement
Holly Willoughby, daytime host broke down in tears on Thursday’s episode of This Morning, a television program she co-hosts with Philip Schofield, when a guest mom came in and talked about the death of her son due to misdiagnosis about three years ago, according to Metro.
Willoughby immediately apologized after she cried to mom Melissa Mead’s story, who appeared on the show to raise awareness about her son, William, and his death. Mead shared on the show how they kept some of her son’s ashes in a stuffed bear so that they can have the sense of his being with them.
Mead also talked about how she felt “blessed that he picked [her] as his mom.” Schofield graciously took over the interview while Willoughby composed herself. Then, he finished off the segment. She apologized to the viewers and to Mead, which she also gave a huge when the camera turned off.
According to Mead, William was having a persistent cough for weeks and weeks before she and her husband, Paul, were informed by the doctors that it was a viral infection. Then, the boy’s symptoms got worse and he began to develop a severe fever. This forced the parents to bring William to an emergency doctor.
Three days after his symptoms started to show up, William died of sepsis or blood poisoning. It was revealed that the failure of correctly diagnose what was wrong with him led to his death. The National Health Service, the general practitioner, and the emergency department all failed to detect or give a correct diagnosis.
Jeremy Hunt, the Health Secretary, publicly apologized to the family. Hunt said, “This weekend, William should have been enjoying beautiful Cornish sunshine with his parents, and because, we, I as Health Secretary, the government, the NHS, let down William, Paul, and Melissa, we didn’t spot his sepsis before it was too late.”
According to Mead, doctors incorrectly gave their son 16 misdiagnoses.
According to NHS, Sepsis is typically rare but very serious condition of an infection in the body. If treatment weren’t administered as soon as possible, there’s a huge chance for sepsis to lead to multiple organ failure and even death.
Some of the signs of sepsis in babies is if they have high fever, looking bluish or pale, and hadn’t peed in twelve hours. Cases of sepsis affect at least 123,000 people every year in England. More people die from sepsis than those who die from breast, prostate, and bowel cancer combined.
