Published: Saturday, 11th July, 2009 2:00pm

Brave tot survives killer bug

A BRAVE tot who spent four days on a life support machine fighting a deadly disease has made a miraculous recovery.

Little 16-month-old Kaylyn Palmer was struck down with meningitis and was so ill, she went cold and her body started to shut down.

Her desperate mum Samantha Ware rushed her down to Greenock Health Centre where a GP gave her antibiotics and oxygen and she was transferred to Inverclyde Royal.

A team of 14 medics battled for six hours to save the toddler until she was stable enough to be transferred to the Children"s Hospital in Glasgow.

Samantha, 24. who lives with her partner Steven Palmer in South Street, Greenock, said: 'I wouldn"t wish it on my worst enemy. I didn"t know what to expect.

'It never clicked how bad she was until she started to get better. They took her away to the resuscitation room and her organs had started to slow down. I just couldn"t stop crying and I couldn"t leave her - it was the worst day of my life.'

Doctors at the Glasgow hospital confirmed she had meningococcal septicaemia.

Kaylyn became unwell with a high temperature and rash on Wednesday 17 June and her mum took her to the GP who told her that it was a virus and prescribed Calpol.

But she started vomiting the next day and when Samantha was told she couldn"t see a doctor until 4pm her motherly instinct kicked in and she went to the health centre straight away. Samantha said: 'All the doctors said that if I had waited until the afternoon, Kaylyn wouldn"t have been here or she could have lost her limbs because she was so cold.'

And the sight of their precious daughter linked up to a ventilator was almost too much to bear for her heartbroken mum and dad.

Samantha said: 'I really thought she was going to die and when I saw all those machines around her I felt sick.

'Her daddy couldn"t cope at all seeing his wee girl like that.

'I got a fright when one of the nurses told me I could take a photograph of her and I thought she"s going to die.

'Why would I want to take her photo of her like that? Then I panicked in case I didn"t have the last picture of her.'

But fighter Kaylyn defied all the odds and a week after falling ill, she came home. Her mum said: 'The doctors couldn"t believe that she was on her feet again so soon after being so sick. They said she was a lucky girl.'