WARNING: CONTAINS GRAPHIC IMAGES
A mum has revealed horrifying images of her little girl with the 'worst chicken pox' her doctors had ever seen - and revealed that she was turned away from A&E twice.
Evie-Beth Taylor was just five when she flummoxed doctors with chickenpox so bad they initially told her parents it might be a rare genetic condition and not the childhood disease at all.
The infection was so severe the little girl was left screaming in pain whenever she was touched, making it impossible for mum Lianne Taylor, 33, to clean her airways.
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So poorly she couldn't eat, drink or even use the toilet, poor Evie-Beth's nose became so clogged with 'rock hard' mucus that the little girl struggled to breathe.
Lianne, from Newton Aycliffe, County Durham, called paramedics and her poorly daughter was rushed to A&E twice in just two days.
But Lianne claims she was 'treated like an over the top parent' and was turned away both times, being told that she had to wait 10 days for the antibiotics prescribed by her GP to work.
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Now desperate, Lianne took her daughter back to the GP once more who immediately arranged for her to go straight to hospital - where doctors told Lianne it was lucky she had brought in Evie-Beth when she did.
After four days in hospital, Evie-Beth was finally allowed to return home but it took months for the spots to completely go and she has been left with scarring across her face and body.
A year on, Lianne and Evie-Beth are bravely sharing the shocking images of her ordeal to raise awareness of just how serious chickenpox can be and tell other parents to seek help if concerned.
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The mum said: "It was really traumatic seeing Evie-Beth like this. She was struggling to breathe because she was so blocked up. We couldn't get near her to wash her down or clean it away because she was screaming in pain.
"The spots just kept coming and coming. Even when she was in hospital the doctors were coming in everyday and she was coming out with more and more spots. The doctors said they had never seen chickenpox that bad.
"They had a photographer come in and take photos of her skin because they had never seen a case as bad as hers before. They didn't know why."
Mum-of-two Lianne first noticed a spot on her daughter's arm on 4 February 2017 and thought it could be chickenpox.
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When the infection broke out in spots all over her body on February 8, her worried mum and dad, Stuart Taylor, bathed her in a bath with oats and rubbed her with creams and camomile lotions to ease the itch. But their daughter only got worse.
Lianne started sleeping in the same bed as little Evie-Beth so she could wake her up every hour to give her a drink.
Her GP prescribed her with antibiotics - but when paramedics took Evie-Beth to A&E on 10 February they turned her away before telling her the same again the following day, explaining that they had to wait 10 days for the medication to take effect.
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It wasn't until her GP sent Evie-Beth straight to Darlington Memorial Hospital on 13 February that the little girl was finally admitted.
Lianne, who studies history at Teesside University, said: "It was absolutely awful. Being sent away from A&E made me feel like I was treated like an over the top parent.
"It made it feel like it was beyond me and I couldn't do this. This was beyond the help I could give her.
"She couldn't eat or drink, she just lay there. She was crying and moaning and every time she moved she screamed.
"I took her in the car to the doctor's and it took the GP to see her in pain to phone A and E and get her straight in at Darlington Hospital.
"They said this is really bad, any later and it would have been a different situation. They took her bloods and put her in isolation. The consultant sat us down and said it might not be chickenpox but could be a very rare genetic disease.
"They were going to have to transfer her over to Durham hospital where they could test her for it. It was very worrying. We got her across to Durham where consultants came in confirmed it was chicken pox but they didn't know why it was so bad.
"Thank god it didn't go a different way. Even afterwards she had viral fatigue syndrome so she wasn't able to go back to school full time for a little while."
Happy, healthy and now seven, Evie-Beth is still bothered by her scars from her chickenpox.
Lianne said: "She is a happy bouncy girl. What upsets me most is that she does say she looks funny now and that's heartbreaking to hear.
"I still tell her she's beautiful even though she's got these scars. She doesn't have a lot but there are many of them on her face.
A spokesperson for County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust said: "While we cannot comment on individual patient cases we always welcome feedback on our services, especially where patients or their loved ones feel they have not received the care they would expect.
"We are sorry if this has been the experience in this case. We would be happy to discuss the case in more detail if the family would like to do so and would ask them to make contact with our patient experience team."
Topics: Hospital, Feels, Community, UK, Health