Photo: Sharon Carver
As the mom of a 6-year-old, this story is hard for me to write. But if anything good can come out of 6-year-old MJ Poole’s sudden death, awareness is how it will be accomplished. Looking at this heart-wrenching image, my heart BREAKS for his mom, Sharon Carver…but she wants us to look, and listen to her son’s story so that other lives might be saved.
MJ had lived a normal, healthy life when he contracted meningitis. Within 2 days of showing symptoms, he was dead. Now Carver and her husband Marc Poole want MJ’s story to be told so that other parents can learn the early signs of this deadly infection and seek treatment as soon as possible.
“I don’t want any parent to go through what me and Marc went through — I cannot describe the feeling of losing a child,” Sharon told the Daily Mail. “You watch TV, films, and read these things about other people — it’s frightening how quick this horrible condition can take hold.” She says that when a child develops a headache, fever, rash, and vomiting, parents might not immediately jump to considering that it could be meningitis, but they should.
