AMERICA:The death of a lively 12-year-old has attracted wide media attention in the US
RORY STAUNTON was a happy, normal, athletic 12-year-old with freckles and an engaging smile. His heroes were John F Kennedy and Chesley Sullenberger, the pilot who safely landed a crippled airliner on the Hudson River. At Garden School in Queens, Rory took newcomers under his wing and initiated a campaign to stop the hurtful use of the word “retard”.
But as his uncle, the publisher Niall O’Dowd, wrote, Rory “was also strangely mature for his age, taking part in adult conversations while other kids played childhood games”. Rory’s debating coach and teacher Kevin Burgoyne called him “the most profound 12-year-old I ever met.” Rory died needlessly of septic shock last April 1st, four days after scraping his elbow in a basketball game.
Rory’s parents and sister Kathleen have received condolences from the presidents of the US and Ireland and dozens of Irish and US politicians. Rory often accompanied his father Ciarán, a native of Co Mayo, a prominent business owner and president of the Irish Lobby for Immigration Reform.
Had he lived, Rory appeared destined to become a journalist, politician or pilot. At age six, he asked his class to discuss the life of Rosa Parks, who inspired the civil rights movement by refusing to give up her seat on a segregated bus in Alabama.
Rory’s mother Orlaith, who emigrated from Co Louth, remembers how he bounded up the stairs last December to tell her Kim Jong-Il had died. “First of all, who is he? And secondly, you’re supposed to be doing your homework,” Orlaith replied.
After Rory’s death, his parents found a letter he was writing to the dictator’s son, Kim Jong-Un, asking why North Korea maintained such a large army when its people were starving.
Rory enjoyed “taking off” and “landing” at airports around the world on the flight simulator he installed on his home computer. He tracked down a flight school in Long Island that gave lessons to 12-year-olds, and last year piloted a small aircraft over Long Island for an hour. “Myself and Orlaith and Kathleen were on the ground, watching and praying,” Ciarán recalls.
Rory’s charm and precociousness, but also the absurd manner of his death, have attracted wide media attention in the US. On Thursday, the New York Times published more than a page about his life and the failure of doctors at New York University hospital to identify and treat the signs of poisoning by Streptococcus pyogenes, also known as group A streptococcus, the bacterium that causes strep throat and impetigo. Sullenberger, the pilot Rory so admired, read the article and wrote to the Staunton family that it “touched my heart”.
On the evening of March 28th, Rory mentioned in passing to his mother that he had scraped his elbow in the gym that day. After midnight, she found him retching in the bathroom, running a high fever and complaining of pain in his leg. The following day, the family paediatrician diagnosed acute febrile gastritis and sent him to New York University emergency room for rehydration.
Rory showed several symptoms of sepsis, but these were ignored after a swab of his inflamed throat was negative – an unreliable test with a high margin of error. “The pain in his leg and the red throat were signs of strep,” says Ciarán Staunton.
“All the paediatrician had to do was give him one shot of penicillin and Rory would be alive today.” Rory was sent home before his blood tests returned from the hospital laboratory. They showed high levels of neutrophils and bands – immature white blood cells – which indicate bacterial infection. No one at the hospital appears to have looked at the test results. In any case, no one alerted the Stauntons.
By Friday, March 30th, Rory was turning blue and cried out in pain when anyone touched him. He could no longer walk unsupported. His parents took him back to the emergency room, where staff asked him if he knew the date, and who was president of the US, to test his brain functions before sedating him and putting him on a ventilator. “Barack Obama,” Rory answered. “But who is going to be the next one?” his mother asked. “Barack Obama,” he replied. “That was the last thing Rory ever said,” his dad says. “They put him on oxygen and he went to sleep.” Over the next two days, Rory’s organs shut down, one by one. His skin blackened and his heart stopped repeatedly.
Rory was buried in Drogheda, Co Louth, beside his grandmother.
The Stauntons are making the rounds of New York officials in the hope of enacting Rory’s Law, which would establish clear, failproof procedures when a sick child is admitted to an emergency room. “Hopefully it will save a lot of lives by us getting it out there, by people knowing about it. But that isn’t going to bring back my beautiful Rory,” says Ciarán.
“There is nothing that can ever, ever make up for the child that we reared to age 13, that we had plans for, that we hugged every night,” he says. “We have been sentenced to a life of mental torture and anguish every minute.
“It is absolute, every day . . . I still turn around to talk to my son and he’s not there . . . ”
