Relief should be the feeling that comes as you walk through the doors of a hospital with a sick child in your arms. And that is how Elouise Massa expected to feel when she took her 22-month-old son, Joe, to the emergency department at Northern Beaches Hospital in Sydney’s north on September 14, 2024.
Joe had vomited the evening before and, after a restless night, he was floppy, pale and clearly miles from the cheeky, dinosaur-loving little boy who was at his happiest trotting after his two older siblings, Teddy, seven, and Grace, five.
“You hear about hospitals being run off their feet but it was quiet when we arrived, with lots of empty beds,” Elouise, 38, tells Woman’s Day.
CONSTANTLY DISMISSED
Hope that Joe would be helped quickly evaporated as one mistake led to another and three hours later Elouise was screaming at staff in desperation to help her rapidly declining son.
“He was in and out of consciousness. I’d asked for an IV three times but he wasn’t given one. I was constantly dismissed. Everyone seemed very blase,” Elouise says.
“I texted Danny [Joe’s father] and said he needed to get there. I was sinking into the ground, swallowed up by the enormity of what was happening.”
“When Danny arrived he told Joe, ‘You’re going to be OK,’ and I said, ‘No, he’s not.’”
Minutes later Joe was in cardiac arrest. Staff got a heartbeat back but irrevocable brain damage meant his machines had to be turned off two days later and the little boy passed away.
“The first night going home without him was harrowing. I was in the depths of grief and added to that was a layer of heart-wrenching injustice.“
An investigation found Elouise to be absolutely correct.
Joe had been suffering from significant hypovolemia, a condition that occurs when the body loses too much fluid.
Had he been correctly triaged he should’ve been transferred to a resuscitation or pediatric bed and reviewed within 10 minutes by senior doctors. His life could have been saved.
While Elouise was floored by her grief, it was learning more about these errors that got her standing again.
“It took deep courage but I realised that speaking out was my way of still taking care of Joe. I didn’t understand that I was opening a can of worms,” she says.
Similarly tragic stories of failures at Northern Beaches Hospital came thick and fast from staff and patients alike.
“I kept retelling Joe’s story. It was exhausting but there was relief too – knowing I was no longer walking around with the burden of a failed health care system on my shoulder,” says Elouise.
Amazingly, the government took immediate notice.
Conversations led to action and now, just under a year since Joe’s death, a number of enormous changes have been made. A law’s been passed in NSW banning public-private hospital partnerships, known as “Joe’s Law”.
LOVE WILL GROW
As well as a parliamentary inquiry into the hospital and an independent one into the emergency department, “Joe’s Rule” will provide NSW families with a telephone number to escalate concerns if they do not feel they are being heard in emergency.
“I am hearing stories that this is already saving lives,” Elouise says.
“Joe is being referred to by name and parents are being heard because of him.
“We are remaking our lives through this work and channelling our grief into it. What happened shakes trust in the world and its systems. We are working to make sure no one else who goes to hospital will die like Joe did.”
For Elouise and Danny, loving Joe will remain at the core of everything they do.
“One of the biggest realisations for us was that our job as parents is to simply love our children. I wasn’t able to keep Joe alive at the hospital but I know that we loved him with every fibre of our bodies and that as time goes on our love will grow for Joe the exact same way it does for Teddy and Grace,” says Elouise.
“And despite this unbelievable heartache we continue to believe in all the goodness humanity has to offer and try our best to bring more joy into our lives every day.”
And they’re determined to continue to advocate for their beloved little boy.
“We can tell Teddy and Grace that Mummy and Daddy are working to make sure no one else who goes to hospital will die like Joe did.”
