“About 1 hour, my daughter was dead, but my mother’s instinct saved her life”

She might never have seen her daughter grow up. Sandra, 37, almost lost her eldest daughter, Djena, now 15, when she was only 10 days old. While she was sure that something was wrong with her baby, all the doctors were telling her otherwise. Through courage and tenacity, she ended up saving his life. Now a mother of two children, the young woman tells us how her mother’s instinct allowed her eldest daughter to escape death.

“Djena was a very energetic baby since birth. Quite awake, she didn’t sleep much during the day“, she begins. But one day, Sandra notices her daughter is “a little flat”that she is “not as usual.” “It wasn’t okay, she refused to eatsomething she never did, and she slept a lot”remembers the mother, who admits to being immediately suspicious given the young age of her child. “She was only 10 days old”.

“I am given a suppository and told to go home”

The mother calls her doctor to make an appointment for the afternoon. “According to him, his condition is not worrying, so I go home in the evening“, she indicates. The night passes, but her daughter still does not want to drink a bottle. “I’m starting to worry, she should really be hungry”, she admits. Determined to understand what is wrong with her baby, Sandra returns to see her doctor, who confirms the same diagnosis as the day before. She then goes to an infant specialist a little later in the day.

The doctor examines him. “Your baby is doing very well.”he told her, specifying that he was certainly constipated, “hence the lack of appetite”. Once again, this is not the answer Sandra expected. “Since the day before, she hasn’t drunk a bottle, barely a little water, and is only sleeping… But no one hits, no one reacts“, she gets annoyed. After trying for the umpteenth time to feed her baby, the young mother chose to take her to the emergency room that same evening. “Three doctors examine her, and all tell me that she is simply constipated.“she assures. “They give me a glycerin suppository so she can relieve herself and they tell me to go home.”.

“The doctors don’t know what’s wrong with her.”

Trusting her instincts, Sandra refuses to take her child home. “I say no, I’m not coming home even though my daughter hasn’t eaten anything since the day before”. After two hours of discussion with the medical profession, “we agree to put me in a room with her”, she remembers. A pediatrician examines his baby again and tells him, like all the others before him, that it is constipation problems. An ultrasound was performed, but revealed nothing abnormal, according to doctors.

The next morning, after spending the night in the hospital, Sandra realizes that her daughter is vomiting. “It’s a slightly green liquid, I don’t find that normal, so I’ll report it to the nurse”. But it’s still “the same serenade: I am told not to worry and that everything is fine”, she says. Djena, who is still not eating, is now fed with a drip. A little later in the day, the little girl becomes feverish, while her complexion changes color. “The doctors come to see her but don’t know what’s wrong with her. They do a lumbar puncture and a blood test to check that it is not an infection.“, explains the mother.

“They exchanged labels”

After the samples, Sandra returns to her daughter. She then quickly notices that the labels placed on the table are not those of Djena. “They were wrong, they swapped labels“, she sighs. After this error, doctors must therefore “restart the puncture and blood test with the correct labels”. Unfortunately, the results yield nothing.

Another night passes. Sandra went home to sleep before returning the next day to her daughter. “The fever is still intense but, above all, she has a gray complexion”, she remembers. That’s when everything changes. Loads of doctors rush into the child’s room. “I am told that Djena has something and it needs to be operated on as quickly as possible. We place a camera on her stomach to see what she has.”, she declares. The infant remains in the operating room for 6 hours.

“If I had returned, my daughter would no longer be here”

“In the recovery room, I was told that my daughter had appendicitis which was not detected in time and which ended up bursting. She therefore had peritonitis in the stomach”, Sandra says with emotion. It is an infection of the peritoneum, the membrane that surrounds the organs of the stomach, which manifests itself by intense abdominal pain. “I was made to understand that at one o’clock, she was dead”she specifies, before supporting: “It was my instinct that saved his life”. “If I had gone home every time I was told to, my daughter wouldn’t be here anymore.”laments the mother.

At each auscultation, “even on ultrasound”, no one saw anything. If the doctors finally understood what Djena was suffering from, for almost 4 days, “no one believed me”, Sandra gets annoyed. According to her, they simply “taken lightly”. “I was only 21, it was my first child, all they did was question my word”she laments, evoking an impression of “to be nothing” in their eyes. Has she thought about suing them? “Yes, but against doctors or hospitals, we don’t win”she regrets. “My daughter is fine, that’s all that matters. If she had died, I would have fought at all costs”.

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Rights of women and children, violence, feminism, gender, discrimination, parenthood, education, psychology, health, couple, sexuality, social networks…. Joséphine loves deciphering all the social issues that drive our world…