Little baby Grace makes miracle recovery
Jun 20 2009 by Joanne Butcher, The Journal
A TINY baby made a miracle recovery after her life-support machine was switched off.
Grace Vincent was just six weeks old when she was struck down with a rare form of meningitis and rushed to hospital.
After four days’ watching their precious daughter struggle in intensive care, her tearful parents took the agonising decision to switch off the equipment keeping her alive.
But, freed from the tubes, "Amazing Grace" stunned her parents and medics by beginning to breathe on her own.
The little fighter is now back at home in Holystone, North Tyneside, and fast on her way to recovery.
Parents Emily Ashurst and Pete Vincent are ecstatic after her miracle recovery, although they know she could still suffer lasting damage.
Ms Ashurst, a ward clerk at Newcastle General Hospital, said Grace was born without complications on April 3. "Grace was a very happy little girl," she explained.
"She was quite advanced and smiling after just four weeks. She was doing everything you’d expect a healthy baby to do."
But on May 16 she was rushed to hospital after Ms Ashurst found tell-tale purple patches on her skin.
Doctors knew immediately her condition was serious and she was diagnosed with an infection of late-onset bacterial infection Strep B, which kills one in eight affected youngsters.
Mr Vincent, a 26-year-old Marine, had just returned from Helmand province in Afghanistan when his daughter fell sick.
"It was a really gruelling tour, one of the toughest the British Army has been in," Mr Vincent said.
"I lost a few friends. To come back to this was really hard."
In hospital, Grace deteriorated rapidly. "We watched her stop breathing, we watched them put an oxygen mask on her face," said Ms Ashurst, 26.
"There were 15 doctors in the room at one point. I expected she just had a cold and I made a bottle up until the doctors told us what it was.
"The machines were going, there were tubes put inside her, her eyes were taped up. It was heart-breaking. I didn’t think it was real. Just 24 hours earlier we were shopping for clothes. I thought, why me?
"I started to blame myself, as I now know that 35% of women carry the bacteria. But nine out of 10 women have never heard of it."
