Happier times: Helen (on the right) pictured this week with Sam

A PEMBROKESHIRE mum, who nearly died after being struck down by influenza, says it not only had a devastating effect on her but on her family too.

Helen Watts, who is asthmatic, was extremely ill in a critical care unit for a week in March and is still not well enough to go back to work.

The 42-year-old, from Jeffreyston in Pembrokeshire, said it frightened her children to the extent that after she came home, her young son checked her pulse at night to make sure she was still alive.

“And I think it was all because I didn’t have the flu vaccine,” said Helen, who is in the at-risk category because of her asthma.

In March, Helen came down with what she thought was a cold but which, after 24 hours, seemed more like a chest infection.

This exacerbated her asthma and she became so unwell that husband Lee took her to A&E at Withybush Hospital.

Helen was given antibiotics and other medication, and was admitted so tests could be carried out.

Within 24 hours, her condition deteriorated and she was admitted to the high dependency unit with what was later diagnosed as the H1N1 strain – more commonly known as swine flu.

Helen said: “I was very poorly and on the brink of being ventilated.

“It did improve after that but I was in HDU for a week and in hospital for about two weeks afterwards being very poorly.

“The doctors told me I am lucky to be here.”

Although Helen has little memory of her time in hospital, twin sister Sam Robinson, from Carmarthen, remembers it all too vividly.

Sam said: “Helen was having seizures, being bagged and central lines put in.

“Anyone who has been with someone in a critical care situation will empathise with that. You’re living for every minute.

“It was hard as a sister to watch someone that you love so much going through that. It was upsetting. I never want to see her in that position again.

“It could have been avoided, possibly, with the flu vaccination. She certainly wouldn’t have got as ill as she did.”

Helen was getting better but still quite poorly when this picture of Sam visiting her in hospital was taken. Seven months later, Helen is still not well enough to return to her job as an administrator with a photographic business.

Although she is improving, her lungs are only working at 70% capacity and she has to take a lot of steroids.

She said it had all been very tough on her family, especially on son Harri, aged 11, and 14-year-old daughter Lauren.

Helen said: “People were getting upset seeing me with all the machines, and it was very intimidating for the children.

“It really affected them. After I came home, Harri, who was aged 10 then, was actually checking my pulse in the early hours to make sure I was still alive.

“They wouldn’t let me go anywhere. They wanted to know where I was all the time.

“It was hard on my husband too because he had to deal with everything.

“But everyone was brilliant. I’m just very lucky I’ve got such a good family, and friends were fantastic too.”

Sam is a nurse and has always had the flu vaccine partly because she is also asthmatic, but also to protect the patients she cares for in the Wales Fertility Institute in Neath Port Talbot Hospital.

She also had flu earlier this year but, she said, was not too badly affected because she’d had the vaccine – which covered the H1N1 strain that had such a devastating impact on Helen.

Sam added: “To see my twin sister so poorly like that was very traumatic.

“So for me now it’s not just about protecting patients – I’m urging people to do it for their families too.

“Like Helen said, it’s the whole family that is affected, not just the person who is ill.”

Helen herself is taking no chances and arrived half an hour early to have the flu vaccine the day it was available at her GP surgery – with Harri there to have it too.

Helen said: “We’re not going to miss out on any flu vaccination ever again. We’ve had a hard lesson to learn.”