A heartbroken widow has issued a warning after her young Premier League scout husband died of meningitis after doctors dismissed the symptoms.
Father-of-two Reece Darcheville died in 2017 after medics failed to recognize the seriousness of his condition and sent him home without a brain scan.
The 31-year-old from Hackney, East London, was readmitted to hospital just four days later and underwent emergency surgery, but suffered severe brain damage and died nine days later.
Dissatisfied with his treatment, Mr Darcheville’s widow and lover, Shenna, instructed lawyers to investigate her husband’s treatment.
The family have now been awarded an undisclosed settlement by Homerton Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, which admitted liability and provided ‘suboptimal’ care to Mr Darcheville.
Mrs Darcheville said she felt ‘let down’ by doctors who missed the chance to save her husband.
They now hope to raise awareness of the early signs of meningitis – an untreated but ‘well-known’ complication of sinusitis – and fight for improvements in treatment in the hope that similar tragic deaths can be avoided in the future.
“Even after all these years, it’s almost impossible to try and begin to describe the profound effect that losing Reece had on our lives,” said Darcheville’s mother.
“As long as I’ve known Reece, I’ve never seen him sick, so when he started showing symptoms, I knew he was being mean. He tried to carry on and go to work, but he wasn’t feeling well. He even had to miss football practice which never did. It’s hard not to think that when he needed help, he got caught.’
In mid-September 2017, Mr. Darcheville started vomiting and complained of headaches.
After experiencing pain and pressure in his eyes and struggling to sleep, his GP prescribed antibiotics on September 21, believing he had sinusitis, a sinus infection.
Four days later he was admitted to Homerton Hospital in Hackney, where he was examined.
But the youth football coach and PE Teacher, who is scouted by Premier League clubs including Crystal Palace and Tottenham Hotspur, was sent home to complete a course of antibiotics without a brain scan.
Mr Darcheville’s symptoms persisted, and on September 28 he and his wife – very concerned about his symptoms – attended a further GP appointment.
The GP told me that he was concerned that the severity of the symptoms was unusual for sinusitis.
But Mr Darcheville, who founded Islington’s AC United youth football team, was given antibiotics and different anti-sickness tablets and sent home again, after being told he would need a brain scan if his condition did not improve.
His wife called an ambulance the next morning after he became vague and disoriented, and he was taken to Homerton Hospital before being transferred to intensive care at another hospital.
Mr Darcheville was then placed on a ventilator and transferred for surgery later that day.
After surgery, a CT scan showed significant swelling and an MRI on Oct. 2 showed brain damage that was unlikely to recover.
Mr Darcheville, who is survived by his sons Shay, 16, and Rayne, 13, died six days later, on October 8.
A serious incident investigation report by Homerton Hospital Trust later judged there was a possible ‘missed opportunity’ to appreciate the severity of his symptoms and consider further investigation when he was admitted to hospital on September 25.
He admitted that the meningitis and pus on Mr Darcheville’s brain were not recognized until ‘it was too late in the disease’.
The report concluded that he received ‘suboptimal care’ and that different management of his condition could have saved his life.
Emma-Jayne Rudland, a specialist medical negligence lawyer at Irwin Mitchell who is representing Mr Darcheville’s family, echoed his plea for lessons to be learned from his tragic and avoidable death.
“Reece’s family remains devastated by his death and the circumstances surrounding it,” he said. “We believe the Hospital Trust failed to recognize the significance of Reece’s symptoms during his first visit.
‘If it is, then Reece will be referred for a brain scan which will show the pus and he will receive the treatment he needs to make a full recovery.
However, the treatment failure Reece experienced ended up being the most devastating and would continue to affect his family for the rest of his life. While meningitis is a rare complication of sinusitis, it is a well-known complication.
“Therefore, it is important to learn from this case to improve patient safety. Early detection and treatment are the keys to defeating meningitis.’
Mrs Darcheville described her late husband as an ‘amazing father’ and a ‘mentor to many’.
“I met Reece on my 16th birthday and hit it off straight away,” she said. ‘I knew as soon as I met him that he was a kind, loving and generous man.
‘To see him suffer in those last weeks was terrible. When Reece was in hospital the word meningitis was never mentioned, I was told that the sinus infection had spread to his brain and because of the swelling he was critical and might not wake up from the coma.
‘The first time I heard anything about meningitis was when I saw it as the cause of death on the death certificate. Reece was an amazing father and mentor to many and nothing was too much trouble for him.
‘He goes out of his way to try and help others and give them the best chance in life. After Reece’s death, we donated his organs so we could continue to give others a chance at life.
‘He was one of the good people in the world and he didn’t deserve what happened to him. “Now all I can hope for is that I can help raise awareness of the signs of meningitis and that improvements in treatment are made to help others.”
Contact the news team by emailing webnews@metro.co.uk.
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