I received a message via Twitter from a fighter jet pilot, intrigued I opened it to find that it was a pilot of the Red Arrows, (whose name cannot be shared due security reasons). He said that he was getting in touch to thank me for raising awareness of sepsis and more specifically for a particular video that I had posted which contained the symptoms of sepsis and had mentioned that new mums and new-born babies are in the particular at risk group.

He went on to say that his wife had just given birth to their son and were discharged, but his wife wasn’t quite right. They had assumed it was just exhaustion from birth and the new baby so had planned to just mention it the next time the midwife came round in the following few days. But he had seen my video, the list of symptoms and was able to check them off one by one. He immediately put his wife in the car and took her back to hospital where he asked ‘could this be sepsis?’, she was swiftly diagnosed and sepsis had already started to affect her kidneys. Thankfully after a stay in hospital she made a good recovery although suffered for a long time with Post Sepsis Syndrome.

Following that he wanted to reach out to say thank you, for sharing our grief to help everyone else. Subsequently he took William’s ashes, in his teddy bear in a red arrow on one of their displays over my home town in Falmouth. William Mead was also inscribed on one of the Hawk T1 jets which they use in their displays. They also sent a little pilot suit for William’s bear signed by all of the Red Arrows pilots.

The Red Arrows also performed a spectacular display at Heroes at Highclere which they then dedicated to William and the UK Sepsis Trust.