When six-year-old Ottilie Atkins complained of feeling nauseous and dizzy after an afternoon of soft play, her mother assumed she was suffering from exhaustion.
But within hours, the little girl’s vision had become blurry and her eyes “stopped working together.”
Ottilie’s mother Holly, 34, rushed her daughter to hospital where doctors carried out a barrage of tests and discovered the schoolgirl had suffered a life-threatening stroke.
The fatal attack occurs when the blood supply to the brain is cut off, usually due to a blood clot or burst blood vessel in the brain.
Although the majority of strokes affect people over the age of 65, the number of younger people suffering from them is increasing.
A recent MailOnline analysis of NHS data found that the number of strokes among men under 39 has increased by almost a quarter over the past two decades.
The Stroke Association has previously predicted that the number of people aged 45 and over will increase by 59 per cent between 2018 and 2035.
According to the charity Brain Research UK, stroke in childhood is uncommon and affects around 400 British children every year.
When Ottilie Atkins, six, complained of feeling nauseous and dizzy after an afternoon of soft play, her mother assumed she was suffering from exhaustion.
Ottilile’s mother Holly, 34, rushed her daughter to hospital where doctors carried out a barrage of tests and discovered the schoolgirl had suffered a life-threatening stroke.
In Ottilie Atkins’ case, doctors explained that the condition had struck as a result of a ‘reactivated’ case of chickenpox she had 18 months earlier.
The infection caused swelling in the brain, which eventually led to a stroke. In about one to two cases of chickenpox in every thousand, the virus reaches the brain, causing encephalitis, or swelling of the brain.
Holly now runs 19 miles in December through raise money for the children’s charity Great Ormond Street Hospital, which helped Ottilie.
Speaking about the ordeal, Mrs Atkins, from Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire, said: ‘Ottilie has no real history of health problems, she has generally always been very healthy.
“She came from a very small, soft play, it was a little thing, just her and her sister bouncing around.
‘She was very pale and said, “I feel really dizzy.” She felt clammy, like she was sweaty and cold.
“I thought maybe she was running around too much, maybe exhausted herself, and just got a little warm because it was inside.
“She sat down and ate some sandwiches. Her color started to come back, but she kept saying she felt very dizzy.
Although the majority of strokes affect people over the age of 65, the number of younger people suffering from them is increasing
‘I said, “Okay, we’re going home soon, so I’ll take you with me and we’ll leave Dad and your sisters behind.”
“As I walked with her, I felt like her balance was off.”
After returning home, Ottilie watched a movie before she started complaining about ‘seeing things twice’.
‘When I looked at her, I had the feeling that she wasn’t looking all the way forward. She tried to blink and change the way she looked.
‘She was looking forward with one eye and it looked like the other eye was almost rolling around freely, it was really horrible to see.
‘The week before, purely by chance, I took her for an eye test because she had to do one. The optician told me she had good vision.
“I saw this then and thought, what has happened in a week?”
Mrs Atkins took Ottilie to the emergency department at Watford General Hospital where she underwent an eye test, CT scan, blood tests and two MRI scans.
Holly is now running 19 miles in December to raise money for the children’s charity at Great Ormond Street Hospital, which helped Ottilie
On October 17, four days after she was admitted to the children’s ward for examination, a consultant delivered the news that Ottilie had suffered a stroke.
“I couldn’t really understand what she was saying,” she said. ‘All I heard was the word stroke and I thought I had misheard it.
‘I said, “Sorry, can I just clarify, did you say she had a stroke?” I couldn’t believe what she said. She did say that it was very rare for her to have much bad luck, but… she was lucky the severity wasn’t as bad as it could have been.”
The youngster spent three weeks in hospital receiving medication when doctors revealed the stroke was caused by chickenpox she had 18 months ago.
The mother admits that she is grateful that she got Ottilie to the hospital so quickly, as she is now recovering smoothly with regular medication.
‘I’m very grateful that I took her to the hospital and had her examined.
‘Her eyesight is still affected. Improvements have been made gradually, but we never knew at what point the improvement might stop or if it would improve completely.
‘She still has double vision when she looks to the right. Now she deals with it by moving her head a lot more to counteract it.
Symptoms of a stroke are commonly remembered by this four-letter acronym, FAST. Stroke patients may often have their faces droop to one side, have difficulty lifting both arms and may have slurred speech, while time is of the essence as immediate treatment of a transient ischemic attack (TIA) or mild stroke can significantly reduce the risk of stroke. a much deadlier major stroke
Other telltale signs of a stroke are less known. These include numbness on one side of the body, dizziness and difficulty swallowing, all of which occur suddenly
‘Doctors said children’s brains can simply be rewired, and that’s how she made a truly astonishing improvement in just a few weeks. If it was an adult it wouldn’t be quite the same.’
Holly now encourages parents to ‘follow their gut’ and have their children checked if they develop any unusual symptoms.
She also wants to raise awareness of the ‘BE FAST’ NHS campaign, which stands for ‘balance, eyes, face, arms, speech and time’, which hopes to diagnose and treat stroke patients more quickly.
‘My advice would be: follow your gut feeling. When I saw that her eyes were working out of sync, I thought something was wrong, so I went to get help.
‘As parents we always want to help our children, but sometimes life gets busy and there are waiting lists for emergency care.
‘Never let that deter you. The doctors are the professionals, seek their help.”