A mum has said doctors were left stunned when her sick baby tested positive for potentially-deadly typhoid fever.
Tanya Johnson said she knew something was seriously wrong with her 12-month-old daughter when her condition kept deteriorating and medics were struggling to come up with a diagnosis, at first believing it to be a viral infection.
But the mum-of-four said the poorly youngster was later found to have typhoid fever, which is caused when someone becomes infected with the salmonella typhi bacteria.
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There are only around 300 cases confirmed in the UK each year and these are usually in people who have travelled to countries with poor sanitation. However, baby Raine and her family had not been anywhere and the youngster hadn't even been in the sea, so parents Tanya and Mick are at a loss as to how their daughter caught the disease.
Thankfully, Raine is responding to antibiotics and it is hoped she will make a full recovery. Tanya, 35, who lives in Middlesbrough with her family, including her three older children, Hayden, nine, Euan, seven and five-year-old Robyn, believes Raine was just days away from reaching stage four of the disease which can lead to brain, heart and bowel complications, and even death.
The self-employed mum said on July 25, Raine began to get a white coating on her tongue, was off her food and irritable, but tests didn't uncover anything. Into the second week the symptoms got worse with loose stools and a persistent cough and over the next two weeks she became very ill.
Raine had a high temperature, wasn't eating or drinking and couldn't sit up and had to be placed on a drip and have a feeding tube put in.
Tanya told Teesside Live : "Her stools were terrible, she was just going all the time. I couldn't understand where it was all coming from because she wasn't eating or drinking. It was the most horrific experience, she was so poorly. It was so awful seeing my baby like that."
The mum-of-four said staff at James Cook Hospital were all stunned when they got a diagnosis. She said: "They couldn't believe it because it is so rare. Some of the staff were saying they had never seen a case in the whole of their careers."
She said: "Raine is coming on leaps after receiving the correct treatment. She is eating, drinking and smiling again. She still has another week of intravenous antibiotics to complete and further tests to make sure there is no internal damage."
Tanya said she wants to share Raine's story just in case a similar thing happens to somebody else. She said: "I just want other people to know about the disease."
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