Isabella’s Story

On Saturday 20th October 2018 our world was turned upside down when we took our little princess to Rotherham A+E to be told our 17 month old daughter was critically ill. She was taken straight to resus as they believed it to be meningitis and would need to be urgently transferred to Sheffield Children’s Hospital for specialist care. From that moment our hearts sank as we never imagined it to be something so serious and that this could happen to our little girl.

Once arriving at the children’s intensive care unit, more tests were done where they confirmed that not only did Isabella have a rare strain of meningitis called Pneumococcal Septicaemia but also that Isabella’s case was extremely bad. Due to the severity of her illness they had to highly sedate and put her onto a ventilator so that they were taking as much work off her little body as possible.

The next day Sunday 21st October we were given the most devastating news imaginable… some of Izzy’s vital organs were already shutting down and that they didn’t believe she would make it through the day. We were told to gather the family to be with her and say our goodbyes. Thankfully later that week we were told that Izzy was making some slight progress whilst being on dialysis. From this moment on, defying all odds Izzy carried on making slow and steady progress. After a couple of weeks in ICU, Izzy was then finally able to be moved onto a ward to carry on with the rest of her recovery. From then on Izzy had many skin graft surgeries whilst in hospital to remove the dead tissue and was eventually let home after spending a total of 8 weeks in hospital.

Izzy now 7 was also born with a rare chromosome one deletion which has impacted her development and learning and a result of this is delayed in all aspects of life. There is not enough research carried out on this condition so it’s unclear on what Izzys future will look like. On top of this she is also wheelchair bound as a result from her illness back in 2018. At this moment in time unfortunately Izzy’s recovery journey is not over and is due to have multiple future surgeries on both her legs and feet and this will more than likely continue into her adult years. Izzy needs 1-2-1 daily care and I myself am her full time carer, as you can imagine it can be very tiring both physically and emotionally.

We now need to make day to day life at home better by creating a more accessible environment for Izzy so that she can have as much as a normal childhood as possible. Unfortunately, Izzy is now at the age where it’s getting harder to manoeuvre her safely by myself. So we are now at the point where Izzy needs accommodation downstairs and we need to make adaptations to our home to overall make things that little bit easier for Izzy and us as a family. We have applied to our council for a grant to help with these alterations to the house however unfortunately this will not cover the costs of the whole project and the specialist equipment needed. So as a family we are asking for help and have decided to set up this page to try and help with some of these costs.

Anyone that can help, whether that be by donating or simply by sharing this page it would be very much appreciated by the Kipling family.

Thank you for taking the time to visit my JustGiving page xx