Looking at their baby girl, it was hard for Elizabeth and Thomas Spence to think that there could be anything wrong with such a beautiful child.  However, at just 2-and-a-half months old Annabelle Spence was about to start one of the biggest fights of her life.

"In April of 2006 Annabelle was running a fever and being very fussy," says Elizabeth Spence, Annabelle's mother. "Thinking she had the flu, I decided to take her to the family doctor."

After running a Complete Blood Count (CBC), the doctor found nothing wrong with Annabelle.

Feeling that there may be something he wasn't seeing, the doctor decided to send Annabelle to the local hospital.  There doctors ran another CBC and once again found nothing.  The hospital brought in a pediatrician who ran some tests which suggested a more serious problem, and recommended that the family bring Annabelle to Children's Mercy because the local hospital was not equipped to handle her condition. 

When Annabelle arrived at Children's Mercy Hospital on April 25, 2006, she was in shock and had been put on a ventilator.  At that point doctors noted a rash called purpura fulminans which is associated with certain bacterial bloodstream infections.   Annabelle was diagnosed with bacterial meningitis and a blood stream infection, which had caused the rash. The bacteria that caused her infection, Streptococcus pneumoniae, is known to be the most common cause of blood stream infection and meningitis in infants.

"Intensive care was required for several days but antibiotics and intensive support care resulted in clearing of the infection. Healing of the skin lesions, caused by the rash, involving fingers and toes resulted in superficial scarring and the loss of the tip of the right ring finger," says Dr. Mary Anne Jackson, specialist in Infectious Diseases.

Testing also showed that Annabelle was born without a spleen and that was part of the reason that her case was so severe.

After a 15 day stay at Children' Mercy, Annabelle was finally well enough to go home.  Today her mother refers to one year old Annabelle as "a miracle baby."

"We were concerned about delays since she had been down for so long and had gone through such a traumatic experience, but she's advanced so fast that we can hardly keep up with her" says Spence. 

Annabelle started walking at just 11 months old, and is progressing faster than other kids her age, despite her rough start.

"We want to say thank you to our family doctor, Dr. Koehn, for referring us to Children's Mercy," says Spence.  "The doctors and nurses were great.  They were very nice to us, and they knew how to take care of our baby."