By the time you read this I may be dead. I have been pressganged into taking part in the London Duathlon this Sunday in order to raise money for the Chelsea and Westminster Health Charity. A canny young man who works for the charity noticed a reference to the paediatric unit at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital in something I wrote about my son and suggested that this might be a good way to give something back. It was a request I couldn’t refuse.
Ludo was born with neonatal varicella, an extremely rare condition that, in certain circumstances, has a 30 per cent mortality rate. Varicella is the Latin word for chicken pox and while that is not normally a life-threatening disease, it can pose problems for newborns because of their undeveloped immune systems. Typically, a baby born with varicella will also be born with the appropriate anti-bodies since the mother will pass both on simultaneously. However, there is approximately a five-day window in between someone catching chicken pox and developing the antibodies, and the problem in Ludo’s case is that Caroline had been exposed to the virus less than five days before his birth. The upshot was that he was born with the disease but without the ability to fight it.
The situation was complicated by the fact that, initially, Ludo presented no symptoms. Caroline discovered some suspicious-looking spots on her abdomen 48 hours after giving birth and her mother suggested they might be chicken pox. I immediately got on the phone to Chelsea and Westminster Hospital — the nearest one to us with a paediatric A&E department — and spoke to a nurse called Catherine. She was sympathetic, but said there was no point in bringing Ludo in since they didn’t have any ‘cubicles’ free.
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