Heartbroken family and friends have paid tribute to a 17-year-old girl who died after developing tonsillitis on her first holiday abroad without parents.
Leah Rogers, from Briton Ferry in Wales, fell ill after she visited Palma Nova on Majorca with a group of friends in May last year and soon her situation deteriorated.
When Leah returned home, it appeared she had a bad case of tonsillitis - a condition which had made her unwell multiple times in the past. But this time, she would soon be told she only had weeks left to live.
Within a couple of days of returning from the trip Leah became ill, her mum Kath Rogers, 57, explained. Her parents rang the out-of-hours surgery and she was prescribed antibitoics, WalesOnline reports.
After being taken to hospital twice in the week after the break, her condition began to get worse. Mum Kath explained: "It got to the point where she took an accidental overdose of paracetamol because she took too many painkillers."
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The teen died from a rare blood disorder (Media Wales)After days of not seeing any improvements to her condition she was prescribed with a different course of antibiotics. But when Kath realised the hospital had not given her enough tablets to last for 10 days as prescribed she returned to the hospital alone only to be told Leah had to accompany her in order to be given any more medication.
Kath added: "It's as if that was meant to happen. We thought we'd finally see an improvement so we felt a bit more at ease. But by the Tuesday she was getting pain in her abdomen. When the doctors came to see her straightaway they said she had glandular fever."
Leah wasn't eating or drinking due to the pain in her throat and Doctors agreed that as soon as she could drink and eat she could go home. The next day doctors told Leah's parents the blood tests had shown she had liver failure and her condition began to esculate from there - including a visit to a specialist in Birmignham.
Leah was taken into intensive care in Princess of Wales Hospital, Bridgend where she became disorientated and would begin trying to get out of her bed. She was shortly put on life support after this before being transferred to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham.
Friends and family got tattoos of angel wings in memory of Leah (Kath Rogers)Kath said: "I thought they'd just put her on life support for the journey and then when we got to Birmingham they'd wake her up. But they never woke her up. They then realised it was far more serious than we had anticipated.
"On the Sunday the doctors said they were getting the haematologists involved because they now thought it was something else going on. They said it could be one of two things.
"They thought it might be leukaemia or they thought it might be a condition called HLH. The doctor said: 'Please don't Google it.' Of course that's the first thing we did. Oh gosh. It hit me like a sledge hammer. It was awful."
HLH, or haemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis, is a life-threatening immune condition which causes the body to react inappropriately to a ‘trigger’, usually an infection.
"Basically there was no more treatment they could do for her. I organised for somebody to bring my son and daughter up," the heartbroken mum explained. "We didn't know how long she had but we knew it wasn't very long.
"They came up on the Monday afternoon and we could just see Leah was deteriorating in front of our eyes. We thought: 'This is just cruel.' We couldn't do it anymore. It was prolonging things for her and prolonging things for us. So we had the discussion with the doctors and asked is there anything else you can do for her to give her any kind of chance and the answer was no basically.
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"We made the heartbreaking decision to start decreasing the medication. They then stopped the life support and within minutes she was gone. It was about three o'clock in the morning. We thought we might have had days but it turned into hours."
Leah, who was family-obsessed and loved her older siblings as well as her niece, nephew and her friends, sadly died on June 7, just three months before her 18th birthday. Her family feel grateful she was put on life support before they found out the severity of her condition.
Leah's dad Hugh, 58, added: "The reality of the situation made us realise: never take life for granted. People don't realise what they have until it's taken away."
Staff and pupils at Leah's former school Ysgol Bae Baglan created and presented this display on the day of Leah's funeral (Kath Rogers)
People gathered at Aberavon Beach and released balloons (Kath Rogers)Her friends and family have got tattoos to remember her with and her friends even take along a cardboard cutout of Leah out with them to make sure she continues to be part of important events like birthdays. This year the family visited Palma Nova and scattered some of Leah's ashes there as it was one of her favourite places.
Last year the family raised more than £20,000 for the charity Histio UK through a fundraiser which also marked Leah's 18th birthday at a local pub. This month they will be putting on another fundraiser to celebrate Leah's life and raise funds for the charity.
Tickets are £10 each and the evening will include live artists, raffles, games and a DJ. The night to remember Leah will take place on Saturday, September 9, from 6.30pm until late at JK's in Briton Ferry. Tickets are available at JK's and any donations or payments to the charity can be made via PayPal to leahrhistiouk@outlook.com.
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