On the 1st of May 2008, our beautiful precious daughter and wonderful sister to David was sadly taken from us, aged just 21.
Leanne was at Uni studying sports and was in her 2nd year. She was an incredibly fit and healthy young lady which is why this is all so hard to understand.
Leanne played water polo and swam for the University and came home at weekends to work as a lifeguard at our local leisure centre.
Leanne had been a bit off colour the weekend before and we thought she had flu. However, she didn’t want to come home. She thought she would be OK but by Monday morning she phoned me at 6am saying she wanted to come home, so I drove to Wales to bring her home.
Leanne was OK at first – just content on being home – but by Wednesday there didn’t seem to be any improvement so I called the Doctor out to her and he told us she had tonsillitis and prescribed antibiotics.
However, on Thursday morning she seemed worse so I called the Doctor again at lunch time and he came back early evening. When he couldn’t get a blood pressure reading from her he said she needed to go to hospital, so my husband drove us there as we could get there quicker than waiting for an ambulance.
Within one and a half hours of her being admitted she had died.
It is all still so painful. I still struggle to understand why this has happened to a perfectly fit and healthy girl.
We now know that Leanne did not have tonsillitis but glandular fever which then led onto her dying of Myocarditis.
How we carry on from here I just don’t know. It has been a great help discovering CRY; and also going onto a Facebook page that her brother set up for her and reading all the lovely messages that everyone has left.
Sweet dreams my beautiful baby.
Mary Haddrell
