'His shyness turned in fear
''Mack was able to get used to the pediatric nurse at KinderThuisZorg from a distance and didn't panic when they put in the IV.''
It started with carnival, says Milou Mathijssen, mother of Mack (2). 'He wasn't feeling well. Fifth or sixth disease the doctors thought, it turned out to be a streptococcal infection. A big one.
It didn't make sense to me. Mack kept running a fever near forty degrees and wouldn't sit or stand. Then suddenly his arm became very swollen. The family doctor immediately sent him to the Bravis hospital in Bergen op Zoom. There he was admitted and examined. Because they didn't know exactly what he had, we all had to be quarantined. After a day and a half, the results came: Mack had a serious streptococcus bacteria in the bloodstream, a flesh-eating bacteria, a serious, say, streptococcus a. He then spent a week in the hospital, on a drip.