The main thing 18-year-old Aaron Mills’ parents, Deniz and Anthony, worried about when he left their Kidderminster home to go to university in Liverpool in September was that he’d be alone.
He instantly proved them wrong. He loved his football science degree course and thrived on his new-found independence.
‘He made friends, he went to the gym, he ate healthily and he worked hard,’ says Deniz.
‘We were as excited as he was for the things to come. His dream was to work as a coach at Liverpool FC.’
Deniz, 48, and Anthony, 50, have not begun to process the shock of Aaron’s death on January 3 from meningitis B (a form of the more dangerous bacterial meningitis) after just a couple of days of mild cold-like symptoms.
‘The one thing we didn’t worry about was losing him,’ says Deniz.
‘It never occurred to us that there might be a bacteria on campus that could kill him.’
At home over Christmas, Aaron partied hard with his old schoolfriends. So when he woke up with a light cold just before New Year, Deniz, a family support worker in a primary school, and Anthony, who works for a housing project, weren’t worried.
Aaron Mills, left, with his sister and parents. The 18-year-old died on January 3 from meningitis B
‘It was nothing out of the ordinary for an 18-year-old who’s been enjoying himself,’ says Deniz. ‘On the morning of the 29th, he said, “I’m really tired Mum” and he spent most of that day in bed. But in the evening he got up and dressed, we ate together and watched a film, and he stayed up to watch something else – he was fine.’
But around 6am on Tuesday, December 30, Deniz could hear Aaron in the bathroom – ‘he was muttering and moaning to himself as if in pain,’ she recalls.
‘He said he had a headache so I got him some paracetamol and a drink, and took his temperature – which was normal – and we chatted in the living room for half an hour about his plans for New Year’s Eve, then he went to bed.’
Deniz has been over and over that morning in her mind a thousand times since.
‘I can’t pinpoint anything that alarmed me,’ she says. ‘He didn’t have light sensitivity, a sore neck, painful joints or a rash. There was nothing to suggest anything serious.’
Yet 20 minutes after he went back to bed, Deniz heard Aaron screaming – and both she and Anthony ran to his room.
‘He was having some kind of seizure, his hands were curled up to his chest, he was agitated and dysregulated with no control over his movements and trying to get his top off,’ says Anthony.
‘At one point, he sat up and looked me straight in the eye for about three seconds.’
It’s an image Anthony can’t forget, the last time he saw his son’s eyes open.
‘I thought he was about to snap out of it, but actually that was just the beginning of the end.’
Thirty years ago, Anthony witnessed his step-brother, Scott, then 20, in a similar state.
Anthony recalls: ‘He was agitated and trying to put something on a shelf that wasn’t there.’
He called an ambulance. Scott was soon diagnosed with bacterial meningitis, and survived.
‘So with Aaron, we didn’t hesitate,’ Anthony says. ‘We suspected meningitis, called 999 and an ambulance was there in 14 minutes.’ The paramedics gave Aaron an injection of antibiotics and, in the ambulance, he seemed calmer.
Aaron was studying a football science degree course and his dream was to work as a coach at Liverpool FC. Pictured in front of the shirt of the team’s former player Trent Alexander-Arnold
Aaron at home in Kidderminster aged eight
‘I presumed the antibiotics were working,’ says Deniz.
‘But later that day a neurologist told us that by the time we got to hospital, 20 minutes away, most of his brain function was probably gone.
‘So we’d already lost him by the time we got there.’
Aaron was put on a ventilator. He had a CT scan and a lumbar puncture, which confirmed meningitis – and was blue-lighted to University Hospital Coventry for an operation to insert a drain that would release the fluid and pressure caused by the inflammation on his brain (the infection affects the meninges – the membranes that surround it).
Throughout, doctors were ruthlessly honest about Aaron’s chances of survival.
‘At 6pm on Tuesday evening the surgeon told us they’d done all they could, but his brain was so swollen it was unlikely he would survive,’ says Deniz.
‘On Wednesday, New Year’s Eve morning, the critical care team told us Aaron had probably already passed away. He was only kept alive by the ventilator.’
Deniz, Anthony and Aaron’s younger sister, Casey, 16, sat by his bedside, trying to come to terms with what had happened.
On Saturday, January 3, Aaron’s sedation was switched off so his brain activity could be tested.
Doctors dripped cold water in his ears (if the brain is active, it stimulates the acoustic nerve and triggers rapid side-to-side eye movements), wiped his eyes and switched off his ventilator to see if he could breathe unaided. He couldn’t.
‘He was warm and his cheeks were rosy,’ says Deniz, ‘but he wasn’t there.’
The memory is unbearable. Aaron was pronounced brain dead that evening, and the following day, six of his organs – including his heart – which the family agreed to donate, were removed for recipients around the country.
‘From the moment he was born, Aaron was the most important thing in my life,’ says Anthony.
‘Everything I did was for him, and for Casey when she came along. Now he’s gone I have no purpose. I haven’t got it in me to be the dad I was. Our lives are broken. It scares me because I have no idea how to live.’
Aaron leaving for prom aged 16, as his mum gives him a kiss on the cheek
Deniz sobs as she describes the clever, kind and generous boy Aaron was: ‘School friends have told us if it hadn’t been for his support, they wouldn’t have passed their A-levels.’
Aaron had had the routine meningitis ACWY vaccine at school when he was 14. Deniz and Anthony had no idea, until lab results confirmed he had MenB, that another strain existed.
‘If the dangers of MenB had been outlined by his uni or any official website, we’d have paid for the vaccine privately,’ says Deniz.
After his son’s death, Anthony emailed 164 universities – and their student unions – and all 650 MPs in the UK, ‘to try to get information out there that I wish we’d had’.
Only one MP replied personally: ‘The Labour MP, John McDonnell, answered to say he’d pass my email to the health secretary.’
Deniz and Anthony have watched in horror as meningitis student deaths were announced in Kent last week, just months after Aaron’s.
‘It really hurts, because I wanted to get the information out and protect someone else’s child,’ says Anthony.
The family are on a waiting list for bereavement counselling. Alongside their agonising pain and shock, there is anger.
‘It’s a preventable disease,’ says Anthony. ‘We feel badly let down. Aaron was an exceptional lad – every time he left the house, he gave the best of himself.
‘We thought we were sending him to uni to fulfil his dreams – in fact, we sent him off to die.’
