Family's loss brings new life to five children

by Matthew Lowe, SUNDAY STAR-TIMES and STUFF.CO.NZ
(reproduced with the kind permission of INL Interactive)

11 August 2002 -- Casey Stutt lost her own life but has brought hope to five others.

The seven-year-old Waikato girl died of meningococcal meningitis on Tuesday, a day after being taken to hospital.

Before she died, her parents Ken and Joanne Stutt agreed to donate her organs for vital transplants into other children.
Casey's liver went to a baby, two children have her kidneys implanted and another two youngsters received her heart valves.

Joanne Stutt said: "It makes you feel a bit better and there is quite a shortage of donors from small children.

"The organs are perfectly healthy and can do so much good for someone else. We just hope for those parents and like to think everything is going to work for them and their children get a chance to carry on."

An Auckland District Health Board spokesman said meningitis victims could donate organs. He said children at the city's hospitals were currently awaiting liver, kidney and heart transplants.

Casey spent last weekend playing happily with friends and as her parents kissed her good night on Sunday she told them she had an "absolutely brilliant" time.

On Monday she awoke with a headache and felt sick. Her condition rapidly deteriorated in the space of five hours before she fell unconscious.

She was taken to Waikato Hospital in Hamilton where her parents maintained a bedside vigil but the youngster failed to respond to treatment and died the next day. The couple, who have three other children, Natalie, 13, Kylie, nine, and Daniel, three, said they felt early on their daughter would not survive the ordeal.

"For some reason we just knew she wasn't going to make it when we saw her at the hospital. We wanted a miracle that she would respond and come back the way she was," said Ken Stutt, a 45-year-old dairy farmer.

"I just can't believe it happened like that. I would give everything I have got to have her back but I know that can't happen."

His 42-year-old wife added: "The medical team were fantastic but we knew there was brain damage and if we couldn't have those miracles we wanted her to go."

It is the second tragedy to strike the family after Joanne Stutt gave birth to a stillborn son, Christopher, in 1991.

The family paid tribute to the "bubbly" youngster before her funeral at the All Saints Anglican Church in Matamata yesterday.

"Casey had a lot of charisma about her and loved dancing and singing little songs for us," her mother said.

"She was also quite girly and loved make-up and lacey dresses, but was always the first to come home covered in grass stains after playing rugby or other games with her friends."

News of Casey's death comes as the Ministry of Health today publishes a report revealing New Zealand's meningococcal disease epidemic reached record levels with 26 deaths last year. Casey is this year's 11th victim of the potentially fatal bug.

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