How could it go so wrong that a perfectly healthy 11-year-old girl suddenly looks death in the eye?
,,I’ve always suffered from stomachaches’, says Evi at the kitchen table in Zevenaar. In retrospect, this can be explained well, because the 11-year-old turned out to have a too long intestine. As a result, her digestion was already regularly malfunctioning.
It is early January when things suddenly go wrong. Her intestines revolve around itself (volvulus), the blood supply is cut off and her gut begins to die.
In the night of January 3 to 4, Evi’s parents are awakened by screams from their daughter. Evi squirms in pain.
Because she often suffers from abdominal pain and the family has already been to the general practitioner in vain, the alarm bells do not immediately ring. That changes later that day, when Mother Cindy receives a disturbing phone call. “Chris called to say I should come home after all,” Cindy recalled.
When she comes home, Evi is limp in Chris’ arms. “We immediately called the doctor. He said there was a stomach flu and we didn’t have to worry. That reassured us somewhat.”
The pain gets worse at night. By 6 am, Evi is in so much pain that her parents want to drive her to the emergency room. ,,But because we had been told earlier that it was probably a stomach flu, we decided to wait a while. After all, the general practice would open two hours later,” says Cindy.