Memorial for tragic Perthshire baby

Nov 17 2009 by Andrew Welsh, Perthshire Advertiser Tuesday

A YEAR on from a Perth baby’s sudden death, her family hope to heal the pain by erecting a permanent memorial to the tragic tot.

Nine-month-old Rebecca Hutchison died shortly after being rushed by ambulance from her home in the Fair City’s Letham district to Perth Royal Infirmary on November 19 last year.

Now her mother, Sandie Thompson (21), is gathering funds to put a headstone in place at Perth Crematorium.

“On Thursday it will be a year since Rebecca died,” she said yesterday.

“There is already a small plaque with her name on it at the crematorium but we are waiting for funding to put a proper gravestone down.

“Rebecca’s family are all putting money together to get it for the children’s Garden of Remembrance.”

Miss Thompson, who has a three-year-old son Ryan, said she believes a memorial stone would provide a source of comfort following the tragedy.

“In a way it’ll help,” she said.

“We can have somewhere to go and remember her and a quiet place to think.

“My son still goes on about Rebecca, especially whenever we make bubbles or balloons.

“They go up in the sky and he says Becky should be catching them.

“He also drew a picture at nursery the other day of the three of us cuddling.

“It is just the cutest thing that a three-year-old boy still misses his sister.”

Miss Thompson said the unexpected loss of her daughter was still being felt as painfully now as it was a year ago.

“It’s one of those things you are never going to get over,” she said.

“It just gets me down. It’s so hard.

“We are saving up as we go and hopefully the stone will be erected in the next couple of weeks.

“Then that will be it there, full time. I cannot physically focus on anything else at the moment.

“My moods have been so up and down.”

After Rebecca fell ill on November 14 last year, concerned PRI staff sent the stricken tot to Ninewells Hospital after noting symptoms that included shivering, fast breathing and a high temperature.

Diagnosing an ear and possible urine infection, Dundee-based medics prescribed antibiotics and sent her home.

After a chest X-ray two days later revealed a shadow on Rebecca’s lung, bronchiolitis was diagnosed at Ninewells.

However, after returning home again, her condition deteriorated and she died at PRI last November 19, despite medics battling in vain for two hours to save her.

Miss Thompson has always insisted that her daughter might still be alive if she had been kept in at Ninewells.