Tragic Loss: Our 3-Year-Old Daughter Passed Away from a Hidden Heart Condition—Doctors Believe a Cold Triggered It, and Her Only Sign Was a Cough

WHEN three-year-old Penny suddenly came down with a cough last Christmas, mum Courtney Sherwood simply put the tickle down to winter illness.

The healthy and active toddler had only ever had “one cold in her entire life” before, Courtney, from Stonehouse in Gloucestershire, says.

But after Penny’s chesty cough continued to worsen, the concerned mum-of-two took her to the doctors three times in the new year, where her symptoms were blamed on childhood .

Just months later, Penny suffered two seizures while taking part in her nursery sports day and was rushed to hospital.

Tests here revealed that Penny’s and beating at a dangerous rhythm.

When her condition failed to improve despite medication, she was put on an advanced life-support machine and underwent heart surgery to pinpoint what was causing it.

Tragically, just days later, scan results showed that her bowel and parts of her brain had died due to lack of blood flow.

Courtney and her partner Tom Dunn, 27, were told by doctors that little Penny would have no quality of life.

The devastated parents made the heartbreaking decision to turn off Penny’s life support before she passed away on July 6.

Machine operator Courtney was told Penny’s heart issues could have arisen after an illness as minor as a common cold, and the parents “couldn’t have prevented this”.

Now, months after losing her little girl, Courtney is urging other parents to always trust their gut if they’re concerned about their children’s .

“Penny was the happiest, bubbliest little girl ever. She truly became my best friend,” she says.

“She was just so happy and so clever. She was never ill, I think she had had one cold before this in her whole life. She was a healthy child.

“It was around time last year, she had a bit of a cough but we thought ‘it’s the , it’s normal’.

“It went away for a bit and then it came back and never went away again.

“We were told she had a childhood bug, but the cough wasn’t going away and it got to the point where she started throwing up from it.”

Courtney adds: “We have to walk upstairs to our doctors and she was so out of breath for at least five minutes and the doctor said ‘that’s not right for a three-year-old’.

“They gave her inhalers. It seemed to kind of do something so I thought ‘maybe it is asthma’.

“When she lay on her side she was better. Now we know it’s because her heart was crushing her lungs so lying on the side took the pressure off.

“The next couple of weeks she went from really happy and running around to being lethargic and refusing food. I could see she was losing weight.”

Weeks later, however, Courtney received a call that Penny had suffered a seizure during her nursery sports day on June 29.

The tot was rushed to A&E where doctors found Penny’s heart was and not pumping blood around her body effectively.

After medication proved unsuccessful, Penny was transferred to hospital where she was placed on an advanced life-support machine to aid her recovery.

She was later diagnosed with dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM) – a disease of the heart muscle where heart chambers become enlarged and the heart’s muscle wall becomes thinner and weaker – and she underwent surgery to fix the source of the arrhythmia.

Courtney said “We were all so excited because she came out of theatre and her heart rate was so stable.

“I thought ‘our little girl is going to come home’, we thought we were finally getting somewhere.

“She seemed completely fine, but we went in the next day and her abdomen was really hard.

“We got to hospital, I looked at her brain activity chart and I could see something was different.

“My heart dropped because I knew you can fix the heart but you can’t fix the brain.”

CT scans showed that parts of Penny’s brain and bowel had died due to lack of blood flow, leading Courtney and Tom to make the heartbreaking decision to turn off her life support.

Courtney said: “I do not blame anyone because they tried their best, they were phenomenal.

“She was at a point where she would not have any quality of life if she survived, she’d have to stay incubated on a machine forever.

“We don’t know why this happened. The doctor said there’s pages and pages of things that could’ve caused this.

“Doctors told us we couldn’t have prevented this, they said it could’ve come from simply a cold.

“I don’t want to scare parents, but she had a cold in December and it went downhill from there.

“I think there should be a children’s ECG machine in every .

“For parents – definitely trust your gut. If you’re not happy, get a second .”

Cardiomyopathy is a general term for diseases of the heart muscle, where the walls of the heart chambers have become stretched, thickened or stiff.

This affects the heart’s ability to pump blood around the body.

In dilated cardiomyopathy the muscle walls of the heart become stretched and thin, so they cannot squeeze or contract properly to pump blood around the body.

This reduces its ability to pump blood effectively.

Patients with dilated cardiomyopathy are at greater risk of heart failure, where the heart fails to pump enough blood around the body at the right pressure.

There’s also a , an irregular heartbeat and blood clots.

For many people the cause is unknown and most might not notice any symptoms at first.

The most common symptoms include tiredness, chest pain, shortness of breath, swelling in the feet and ankles and palpitations.