`I ran to phone and screamed for an ambulance'

From the archive, first published Monday 1st Dec 2003.

PARENTS Stephen Whitty and Lynette Cottrill had initially been concerned about Tamara's twin, Christian.

Suffering from a high temperature, Christian was taken to the doctors' surgery at Lyppard Grange, on Wednesday, November 17. He was given a thorough check, and Lynette was told to take him home, keep him warm and dose him with Nurofen and Calpol.

On Thursday, Tamara came down with a temperature.

"She said, `Mummy, my arms are aching'," recalled Lynette. "She had aches and pains, and a headache, but, as a mother with an older daughter, I could see she wasn't too bad.

"On Friday I couldn't leave her side. If only I had gone to the hospital. But I didn't think of taking her to the doctor as I had already taken Christian, and they had told me to give him Nurofen and Calpol. She wasn't as poorly as he was. There weren't any serious symptoms we would have mistaken for anything more than flu.

"That evening she put her Barbie dress on, she at some tea - it was fritters and some nice fish - and said: "Come on Mummy, let's dance". It was Top of the Pops, and Children in Need was also on the telly, which made us all emotional."

It had been a long, tiring week, and Lynette took Tamara upstairs, tucked her up with her special pillow and blanket and let her watch a Barbie video. Christian joined them, and at 9.30pm all three fell asleep on Tamara's big double bed, as her pink tinsel Christmas tree twinkled on the dressing table.

Sometime during the night, Christian wandered off to his dad's bed. Lynette wasn't woken until 1am.

"I opened the curtains wide, to let a flow of fresh air into the room, then Tamara woke up, saying: "Mummy, mummy'," Lynette broke down at the memory. "I turned the light on and she was gasping.

"I screamed: `Stephen, she can't breathe'. I was panicking, ran downstairs to the phone and screamed and screamed for an ambulance.

"Stephen brought Tamara down in his arms. Her jaw had locked and she was in a spasm. Stephen was using all his force to open her mouth and get an airway free, but he couldn't."

As both parents begged for help on the phone and struggled to help Tamara, she began to turn blue. Despite the maze of roads to their Bolton Avenue home in Warndon Villages, Lynette said the ambulance arrived very quickly and they were taken to Worcestershire Royal Hospital.

"They were wonderful," said Lynette. "There must have been 12 doctors around her, doing everything possible for our child. We began vomiting violently because we were in such great shock.

"Then a beautiful dark-haired doctor came over to us and said: `Your daughter is very, very sick'.

"I still thought: `She's sick, she's ill', but they took us to a family room and explained the lack of oxygen meant she was going to be severely brain damaged.

"I said, `I don't care, she's my little girl', then as we went to see Tamara, she took a turn for the worse.

"God bless her, she tried to take some breaths, then she died.

"But really I know she died in the lounge downstairs."

Afterwards, stunned Stephen, Lynette, Christian and Claudia were all checked, and Lynette's twin sister and her children - who live nearby - were all admitted to an isolation ward at The Royal for three days after Tamara's death. They all suffered more severe symptoms than Tamara, but are making a good recovery.

Lynette, 36, and Stephen, 37, who is a company director, are both full of praise for the paramedics and doctors who battled to save Tamara.

They would especially like to thank Dr William Bellamy of the Lyppards Medical Centre, the Rev Nicholas Von Benzon of St John the Baptist Church in Fladbury, and their family for all the support they have received.

"They couldn't have done more, they were absolutely fantastic," said Stephen.

But both parents still fear that the virus which has taken their daughter could be a threat to other children in Worcestershire.

"The coroner has called twice but we're still none the wiser," said Lynette. "Tamara was the weak twin and struggled to live when she was born. I thought she might have had a heart attack, something more than flu."

She shook her head in disbelief. "We need some answers. Do the doctors know what they are dealing with?

"I go to the supermarket - they must think I'm mad - and ask people: `Is your child sick?'

"I want people to know. My concern is another child could get this."

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