Riley was a perfectly happy kid the day he suddenly died aged 13 – then we were told he had a missing organ

THE family of a 13-year-old boy only found out he had a missing organ – but months after it caused his sudden death.

Riley MacDonald woke up for school his usual energetic self on October 9th last year.

NottinghamshireLive/BPMRiley MacDonald caught pneumonia, which triggered septic shock and cardiac arrest[/caption]

But by the end of the day he was taking his final breaths in a hospital bed.

The teen, from Toton, Nottinghamshire, who was a keen footballer and kickboxer, had caught pneumonia, which triggered septic shock and cardiac arrest.

His rapid decline was due to a missing spleen – an organ which is key in helping the body fight infections.

“It explained why it was so fast. The infection had just taken over,” his mum Sally Martin told Nottinghamshire Live.

“It was such a huge shock because there was no reason to believe that was the case.

“He’d been fine. He’d been a perfectly normal and happy kid up until the day he died.”

The 42-year-old said her son had woken up as normal but was sick on the way to school.

“I said he should go to bed. He had flu-like symptoms and slept most of the day,” she said.

“He was not himself. He was so cold. He had blotching all over his skin, which I knew was a sign of sepsis.”

She made the decision to take Riley to A&E but he collapsed in the car and stopped breathing.

“The ambulance and air ambulance came. So many people tried to save him,” Sally said.

“It happened like that all so sudden. He’d got up for school fine, and he was dead by the evening.”

Sally only found out her son’s spleen was missing when the coroner’s report arrived on Christmas Eve.

She believes checks for organs should be carried out during prenatal scans.

You can live without a spleen, but people without one are at an increased risk of certain bacterial infections, especially in childhood, and require extra precautions to prevent them. 

“If we’d have known he would have been able to be on life-long treatment, he would have been on antibiotics and had yearly pneumonia vaccinations,” said Sally.

“I think they should pick it up, it’s such an important organ.

“I understand it’s quite a rare thing but it should be seen. It would have changed his whole life. He’d still be here.”

National guidance meant sonographers involved in Riley’s care didn’t check for the spleen on any antenatal scan, medics at Nottingham University Hospitals (NUH) said in a report prepared for the coroner.

Ultrasound clinical specialist Dr Catherine Sampson said: “The spleen is not an organ that forms part of the FASP recommended 20-week screening scan.

“It is not an organ that is readily identifiable at the 20-week scan, and sonographers at NUH are not trained to visualise or identify the foetal spleen on ultrasound scans.

“I cannot say whether the spleen is present, as this is outside my scope of practice and therefore my area of expertise, as a sonographer trained to perform NHS obstetric screening scans.”

Sally said: “I want awareness because people are so shocked that they didn’t check it. It could be prevented. It’s an extra five minutes in a scan to check it’s there.”

Since Riley’s death, the family, which includes his younger brother and two younger sisters, have been “living in hell”.

“He was full of fun, clever and cheeky,” said Sally.

“He was an energetic kid. He had so many friends and was so outgoing.

“It’s devastated us. His brother is absolutely devastated, absolutely broken. He’s not sleeping, got really bad anxiety, he cries every night.

“Our world has fallen apart. He was such a wonderful boy, such a good kid. It’s like living in hell, waking up in hell over and over again. It was so sudden and out of the blue.”