5-year-old dies after being given 10 times amount of insulin in misdiagnosis
A British boy with autism died after being given 10 times the standard dose of insulin after bungling doctors misdiagnosed him with diabetes, his grieving parents have claimed.
Little Shay Turner, 5, was rushed to a hospital in Rotherham, Yorkshire, in March 2018 — but died four days later after suffering a catastrophic brain injury.
Parents Laura, 28, and Martyn, 29, claim doctors diagnosed him with diabetes instead of the sepsis that hospitalized him.
The couple is trying to raise 12,000 pounds to pay for lawyers to represent them at Shay’s inquest in October.
“So far nobody has told us the truth and we want to know what happened to our son,” Laura said.
“On Good Friday, Shay was unwell — he looked tired, he kept saying he couldn’t go to the toilet, he wanted to drink but couldn’t keep any water down and kept being sick.”
Parents had to turn off life support
“I thought he had caught a bug, but by the time his dad came home from work, Shay looked gray and we decided to go to the ER. It was obvious Shay was very unwell, but it felt like sheer panic at the hospital. A pediatric consultant came to speak to me around 11 p.m. and said ‘due to the laws of transparency,’ they had to tell me about the incorrect dosage. I asked him what this meant and he said, ‘I honestly don’t know.’”
A scan later revealed that Shay had suffered a catastrophic brain injury — and his parents made the heartbreaking decision to turn off his life support.
His autopsy report said he died from multiple organ failure from an unknown cause with the possibility of Hirschsprung disease — a condition that is the result of missing nerve cells in the muscles of the colon — leading to a bowel infection and causing sepsis.
The coroner’s report concluded that Shay did not have diabetes.
South Yorkshire police carried out a 10-month investigation into Shay’s death, but Laura said no further action is being taken.
A spokesperson for Rotherham NHS Foundation Trust, which runs Rotherham General Hospital, said: “Our thoughts and sympathies are very much with Shay’s family and our medical director has recently written to them about the serious incident investigation which we are currently undertaking. Given an inquest is scheduled for the autumn, we cannot comment further at this time.”
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