My 8-week-old baby nearly died from Kawasaki disease now linked to Covid-19 it really is every mums worst n – The Sun

NEW mum Penny Edwards watched helplessly as her baby daughter fought for her life in hospital, her tiny body ravaged by a mystery rash, peeling skin and a dangerous fever.

Her little girl Pippa was just eight weeks old but was battling a rare and deadly inflammatory disease now feared to be linked to coronavirus - which had already caused lasting damage to her heart.

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"She just looked limp and lifeless - like she was dead basically," Penny, 27, tells Sun Online.

"She had a rash, red lips, a gunky eye, a fever, red palms, red soles, and peeling toes and fingers. Her temperature was going up to 40.2C - horrifically high - and her breathing was so fast.

"The consultant said to me, 'I'm going to be honest with you, this is really touch and go'.

"It was the most awful thing a mother could go through."

When you have Kawasaki disease your body is so awful you just want to cry... it eats away at you

Pippa - who incredibly survived her ordeal - was suffering from Kawasaki disease, a condition similar to toxic shock syndrome which weakens the blood vessels and mostly affects children under five.

It can cause aneurysms, potentially leading to heart attacks, heart disease or internal bleeding.

"When you have Kawasaki your body is so awful you just want to cry," adds Penny.

"It eats away at you. When Pippa was responsive, all she did was cry, she didn't want to be touched."

This week, the NHS warned of a possible link between Kawasaki-like symptoms and the COVID-19 pandemic - after a sudden spike in children being admitted to intensive care with a similar disease.

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England's Chief Medical Officer, Prof Chris Whitty, said of the mystery 'inflammatory syndrome': "This is a very rare situation, but I think it is entirely plausible that it is caused by this virus, at least in some cases."

Many other kids are feared to have developed milder - yet still worrying - symptoms in recent weeks.

One youngster, six-year-old Kayden Hooper, left doctors baffled when he turned up to his GP surgery seven weeks ago with "dark blood spots" in his mouth, red marks on his feet and itchy legs.

"The doctor said it didnt look like any case of hand, foot and mouth disease that shed ever seen before, but she couldnt tell me what it was," recalls Kayden's mum Cherrelle, from Hampshire.

She told me shed had four similar cases that week and it was a new thing shed not seen before."

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In following days, Kayden's condition deteriorated, with the spots "going deeper into his skin".

"He also had these weird slits across his feet, like very deep cuts, which got really painful for him. He was constantly itching at school, it was really worrying," says mum-of-two Cherrelle, 31.

"When I went to the chemist, they gave me some paperwork on meningitis which was scary. It took a good five weeks for his feet to go back to normal. The whole time it was never diagnosed."

He had this persistent cough but I didnt think about it then... now, seeing it linked to coronavirus is really worrying

She adds: "He also had this persistent cough but I didnt think about it then - coronavirus wasnt really around at the time, so I wasnt making any connection.

"Now, seeing it linked to coronavirus is really worrying.

"Luckily, if he did have it, hes got over it."

Dr Daniel Atkinson, clinical lead at Treated.com, tells The Sun that coronavirus patients do sometimes suffer asevere, post inflammatory response, where the bodys immune system attacks healthy tissue.

He adds: This could, in theory lead to an exacerbation of the inflammation we see in Kawasaki disease.

But again, because weve only just started to see these cases and theyre still relatively rare, we dont know for sure.

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Penny, from Faversham, Kent, also fears a strain of coronavirus could have triggered her daughter Pippa's near-fatal illness - even though it happened more than two years ago.

Experts say there are different strains of coronavirus - just like there are different strains of influenza - with the one causing the current pandemic first emerging in late 2019.

Penny's nightmare started in February 2018, when eight-week-old Pippa started struggling to breathe before going "limp and blue" in dad Phil's arms as they raced her to hospital.

"She'd stopped breathing," Penny recalls.

"Everybody was shouting and screaming, there was all this massive panic."

At the time, Pippa - who had received her first jabs five days earlier - was feared to have bronchiolitis (a respiratory condition caused by a virus) and sepsis (blood poisoning).

She was put on a machine to pump air into her lungs, while a food line was inserted into her tiny stomach.

It was a horrifying sight for her parents - but worse was yet to come.

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KAWASAKI disease, similar to toxic shock syndrome, is a childhood condition thatweakens blood vessels in the body.

It can cause aneurysms, potentially leading to heart attacks, heart disease or internal bleeding.

The disease, also known as mucocutaneous lymph node syndrome, mostly affects children under the age of five.

According to the NHS, symptoms include a high temperature that lasts for five days or more with:

The cause of Kawasaki disease remains unclear.

"The symptoms of Kawasaki disease are similar to those of an infection, so bacteria or a virus may be responsible. But so far a bacterial or viral cause hasn't been identified," the NHS states.

Around 25 per cent of children with the disease suffer from complications with their heart.

Although Pippa recovered and was discharged from hospital days later, the youngster began struggling to breathe again on the journey home and was rushed back to A&E.

"That's when the Kawasaki signs started to show," Penny tells us.

"She was incredibly irritable. You'd pick her up and she'd wail in pain.

"She wasn't getting any better. We'd look at her and think, day by day she looks like she's dying."

Among Pippa's symptoms were a leg rash, red swollen lips, a persistent fever and tachycardia - a fast heartbeat. But unbeknown to her parents, the disease had devastated her insides, too.

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After being transferred from Kent to London's Royal Brompton Hospital, the youngster was found to have suffered three coronary artery aneurysms - which were 5mm in size.

"Compared to her little body they were absolutely huge," says Penny.

"But she's such a fighter. Even when she was at her absolute worst, she still smiled."

Doctors feared Pippa would die - but again, she beat the odds.

"They have no idea how she pulled through twice," adds her mum.

She's such a fighter. Even when she was at her absolute worst, she still smiled

Fast forward two years and the 'miracle' youngster is enjoying life at home - where's she's spending lockdown terrorising her family's cats and tearing around "like a Tasmanian devil".

"She's still got her heart aneurysms, but they've shrunk enough to come off the injections," says Penny.

"She's also on aspirin, has asthma and is at an increased risk of a heart attack.

"You've always got that concern in the back of your mind."

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It's this worry that led Penny to recently contact her daughter's infectious diseases specialist about coronavirus, after Pippa developed a rash she fears could be down to the killer virus.

"We basically haven't left the house since the day before lockdown," says Penny.

"We're being extra vigilant, but we've got an echo [echocardiogram] next week just in case Pippa's had the virus already and it has caused further inflammation of the aneurysms."

Perhaps it could have been something like coronavirus which triggered the disease

But she also wonders whether Pippa had a form of coronavirus years ago.

"Doctors don't know what causes Kawasaki disease," she adds.

"I do now wonder because there are different types of coronavirus whether Pippa did actually have bronchiolitis or whether it was another strain."

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Mum Harley Hamilton, 32, has dealt with the reality of a child having coronavirus and Kawasaki disease - after her one-year-old son Cillian suffered both within months.

Like Pippa, the youngster nearly died after developing Kawasaki last August.

At first they were treating it as measles but nothing was working," says Harley.

"Then they suspected meningitis. It was terrifying.

"The first signs it could be Kawasaki was his fingernails and toenails started falling off.

His eyes were so bloodshot that it looked like they were actually bleeding, although they werent.

His throat was full of blisters. He was in a lot of pain."

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Struggling to stay awake, Cillian was put on a drip and given a blood transfusion.

"They said he had a 30 per cent chance of making it through, and if he doesnt pick up, he wont make it through the night," adds his mum,from Hertfordshire.

Fortunately, the youngster defied doctors' expectations to survive.

But he's been left with a lifelong heart condition - dilated cardiomyopathy - where the blood vessels are too enlarged to pass through the heart properly.

"Theres no test for Kawasaki, and the condition deteriorates so rapidly," says Harley.

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My 8-week-old baby nearly died from Kawasaki disease now linked to Covid-19 it really is every mums worst n - The Sun