A schoolboy who was rushed into emergency surgery when he nearly lost his eye to a Strep A infection was saved by his quick-thinking mum.
Doctors first thought Lochlan McDonald, 8, had a viral infection and told his worried family to return in three days if it did not improve.
However, when her son stopped eating, worried mum Ellis Neill, from Carluke, South Lanarkshire, took him to his optician who told her to take him to hospital.
Hours later he was diagnosed with preseptal cellulitis, which was putting pressure on his optic nerve and causing severe swelling around the socket, and he was rushed into surgery.
Doctors drained a 3.5cm pocket of bacteria from around his eye and Ellis was told if she had waited he would have lost it.
The 27-year-old told the Daily Record : “Thank God I trusted my gut. If I hadn't, he’d be getting surgery to have his eye removed.
“He had a temperature and was complaining of a sore tongue, so I took him to the doctors and we just thought it was a viral infection.
“But when he woke up the next day, his eye was swollen. Because I have an eye disease, I don’t mess around with them so I took him back to the doctors who said they thought it was conjunctivitis, and I was to bring him back three days later if it hadn’t improved.
“It just kept swelling and swelling more to the point where it was swollen above his eyebrow and the redness had started to track down his cheek. The next day, he wouldn’t eat and wouldn’t get out of bed, which isn’t like him at all.
“There was no life to him at all. I called the optician who told me to take him in later that day. As soon as we walked in, they took one look at him and said he needed to go to hospital.
“We went to the A&E at Wishaw General Hospital and within 10 minutes, one of the staff approached us and said the wait was 18 hours and they were going to try to get him up to the paediatrics ward. Five minutes later, we were up the stairs.
“Within two or three hours, they had specialists from Monklands and Hairmyres Hospital, an ENT surgeon and an ophthalmologist. They said he needed urgent surgery to get a drain on his eye because he had preseptal cellulitis.
“They also told us that if I had left him from the Friday being at the doctors until the Monday, he would have lost his eye.”
During the surgery, doctors took swabs that showed Strep A had caused Lochlan’s infection.
The mum-of-two wants to raise awareness about the Lanarkshire Eye Health Network Scheme (LENS) which handles eye complaints without the need to see a GP.
She said: “The LENS service is like a GP for your eyes. You call up and get triaged to get an appointment, normally on the same day. I hadn’t heard of it before and neither had most people I spoke to.
“I also want to thank the nurses and doctors at the hospital. They were absolutely brilliant.
“I could not fault them one bit.”
