A SCHOOLGIRL tragically died from a brain haemorrhage just hours after complaining of a headache.
Hartlepool youngster Abigail Brenda Iles was rushed to the town's hospital after feeling sick and complaining of a headache. Within hours she was transferred to Newcastle General Hospital by a police escort, where doctors battled to save her life.
The seven-year-old St Aidan's Primary School pupil, who was taken to hospital last Thursday, died on Friday teatime, almost 24 hours after she first felt ill, after doctors announced they could do no more to save her.
Her mother Liz, 41, said: "We just can't believe it, it's just not real. She was probably too good for this world, that's why she was taken. Abigail was our world, our life. She was always involved in everything we did.
"Everything that she believed in she would defend. Although she was still a child, she would join in with the adult conversations and always had an opinion that she could get across. She was brilliant."
Abigail had just finished an audition at 5.30pm on Thursday for the Hartlepool Youth Choir at St. Aidan's Primary School, in Loyalty Road, when she complained about a headache.
Within minutes of returning to her Granville Avenue home, Abigail had collapsed and wouldn't respond to her mother's attempts at waking her.
Heartbroken parents Liz and Ken Iles
Liz, who works as an accounts assistant for Bridgeman IBC, rang NHS Direct before an ambulance was called to take her to the University Hospital of Hartlepool.
When she arrived doctors made the decision to immediately transfer her to Newcastle. Police escorted the ambulance through town.
Doctors at Newcastle General Hospital carried out extensive tests and a brain scan revealed that a vein had burst in her skull, placing the brain under tremendous pressure.
Liz said: "It was so frightening to see her covered in wires when we got to the Newcastle hospital. All we kept thinking was this doesn't happen to people like us. It keeps hitting us in waves of complete grief. She was unconscious when she left home so hopefully she didn't suffer any pain."
Abigail's father, Ken, 38, a funeral director with the Co-operative Funeral Service, said: "I have seen children dying from the other side through my work and I've always wondered how the parents cope. It's an absolute rollercoaster of emotions. She was a fit and healthy child and was on the gifted and talented register for literacy at school. She was so bright and full of life."
A bolt was placed in her skull to help relieve the pressure. The pressure on Abigail's brain wouldn't come down and eventually her parents had to make the heartbreaking decision to turn off the life support machine at 3.50pm on Friday.
Liz said: "We were sat by her side praying for the pressure to come down. Time didn't mean anything at that stage and everything was just a blur. When they turned the support machine off she still looked alive to us, it was as if she was just asleep.
"I keep thinking she is just at her grandma's and she will come running in at any minute, but she won't and at this moment we don't have any closure."
Ken added: "On a morning she always used to come in for a snuggle and when the door went this morning, for a split second I thought it was her."
The funeral will be at St Aidan's Church, St Aidan's Street, this Friday at noon. Flowers are welcome and donations can be made to Zoe's Place baby hospice, in Middlesbrough.
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