It should have been a wonderful holiday in sunny Turkey, but it turned out to be hell. The very healthy baby Milana contracted meningococcal disease last July and breathed her last in Antalya. A terrible tragedy for Coen and Devany Burg from Den Bosch who lost their child from one moment to the next. “In one fell swoop, everything changes for the rest of your life.”
Every year the Burg family goes on holiday to Turkey. Once again this year they enjoyed all the beauty of their resort. Until baby Milana got sick one evening. Devany: “We weren’t that concerned at first, because young children get sick quickly. The next morning I told Coen that he could go swimming with Elena, then I would stay with Milana in the hope that she would recover.”
Milana slept a lot and when she was awake she cried. “She was weak and lethargic and when she started having trouble breathing, I went to the doctor’s office with my mother-in-law. They inserted an IV there and the ambulance arrived within five minutes. We didn’t even have time to inform Coen.”
At the hospital, they were immediately referred to an infection specialist in a private clinic. “They thought it was meningitis. I asked for antibiotics in the IV, but they didn’t want that. They did ask me to arrange the insurance, because they wanted the certainty that payment would be made.”
With sirens blaring, the ambulance drove towards the clinic, but it turned out to be a terrible journey. “You don’t have to be a doctor to see that your child is doing badly. On the heart rate monitor I saw Milana’s heart rate drop and suddenly there was only one straight line. The ambulance immediately stopped for resuscitation. I screamed and my mother-in-law pulled open the back door. Completely upset, I fell out of the ambulance, all I saw was the color draining from my daughter.”
Three minutes later they arrived at the hospital, where they were told that Milana was in very critical condition. “Nobody guided us. All we saw was someone who pushed an A4 into our hands and asked if we had arranged the insurance. Our daughter was seriously ill, but they were busy with money. We walked in ourselves to a crowded waiting room. Everyone gaped at us, we were completely upset.”
In the meantime, Coen was in the taxi with his father to the clinic. He would no longer see his daughter in person. “When we heard that Milana had died, everything collapsed.” After the terrible news, they were put in a dark room without anything to drink. “When I was finally allowed to see Milana, I was sent out of the room after 3.5 minutes.”
Coen and Devany ideally wanted Milana to fly back to the Netherlands on the same flight. That turned out to be impossible and she finally arrived a day later. “We immediately arranged as much as possible with the funeral director, so that we could focus on her as much as possible when Milana returned home.”
Coen and Devany received support from many friends and family members. “You are lived. The week before her funeral there were 50 to 60 people a day in our house. Very nice, but also very tiring.”
The Burg family is in the middle of the grieving process. For Coen, sport is an outlet. He is a goalkeeper for the indoor football players of FCK/De Hommel and plays in the Eredivisie. “I play football on the field and in the hall, where I can express myself a bit. Devany is then at home with our daughter, which is very tough.”
Devany: “Elena makes sure that I get out of bed every morning and that I can still laugh. The times when I have the hardest time is when she is in bed. Then I look at photos of Milana and think about what happened. We had such a beautiful, healthy daughter who died from a rare assassin.”
“You get a vaccination for meningococcus from the age of 14 months, Milana was still too young. We don’t know how she got sick. There is so much sadness, but also anger and disbelief at how they treated us. I still hope that there will be someone comes in and says, ‘There she is again.’”
Milana would celebrate her first birthday next Saturday. Devany: “A day that I am really looking forward to.”