You may have heard parts of our story but I wanted to share our story right from the beginning so that you can truly gage the mistreatment, misdiagnosis and unnecessary pain and suffering my five and a half month old daughter Āria Waiora Krüger endured on her recent visit to Whangarei Emergency Department the morning of Monday 27 January 2025. 

Just to give you some context our daughter had developed eczema in November which started off just on her cheeks.

I was breastfeeding Āria and decided to eliminate dairy from my diet to see if that would resolve the issue. We also started working with the Auckland Skin Clinic with Naturopaths who specialized in the treatment of Eczema and Psoriasis in mid December. After approximately 4 weeks we managed to clear Āria's skin by working on strengthening her gut, removing cows milk formula and using specialised creams to help clear the eczema. 

On Wednesday January 15 we had a revision appointment with the Naturopath who was happy with the progress of Āria's skin and that we would be transitioning to a maintenance moisturizer with a follow up appointment booked in 2 months time. 

Shortly after that appointment we had noticed yellow crusting and weepiness on her right ear and it seemed to spread across her cheek.

Thursday 16 January we took her to the GP to have it assessed. The GP checked her skin and diagnosed it as "staph infected eczema" and we were given a 4 day course of Cefalexen antibiotics and asked for us to return on Monday 20 January to check that it was getting better. That evening at 8pm we gave Āria her first dose of antibiotics which she vomited up. 

Friday 17 January at 8am we gave her her second dose which she managed to hold down. At 3pm that afternoon Ārias face went red with hives.

I rung the GP clinic and they told me to stop giving her the antibiotics and to head to the clinic to have her assessed. We were met by a different doctor from Thursday and he said that she wouldn't have reacted to the antibiotics because it hadnt been in her system long enough for it to be able to cause a reaction but told me "not to rush" and head to Whangarei ED. 

At 5pm the GPs receptionist had rung me to ensure that I was heading to ED as the doctor was concerned about Āria. 

We went to ED where we explained that we thought Āria had reaction to the antibiotics and they told us that it wouldn't have been the antibiotics as a reaction would happen instantly. They changed the antibiotics to deprim, monitored her for 10 minutes and we were then discharged.

On Monday 20 January we went back to our revision appointment with our original GP who looked at Āria's skin and noticed that it wasn't getting better.

She was concerned and sent a referral to ED Pediatrics and told us to head back up there to have her reassessed.

The doctors asked to explain her history from the start, swabbed her ear, examined Āria (pictured below with no visible eczema on her trunk) and concluded with extending her antibiotics for a further 3 days (totalling 7 days of antibiotics) and sent us on our way home with a referral to the outpatients nurse at the Eczema Clinic.

On Wednesday 22 January we went to our outpatients nurse appointment where they checked over Āria post our ED visit and they wanted to devise a plan to tackle her "infected eczema" with steroid creams and a parrafin moisturizer. 

Bear in mind Āria has only ever had one dose of pamol in her life and our family treat any illnesses with rongoā and natural alternatives first and foremost. We were reluctant to use any of the creams prescribed and in actual fact my motherly instincts knew that what she had was a staph infection as we already had her eczema under control (as seen above). We wanted antibiotics that actually killed the infection.

We were prescribed the creams and sent on our way.

Āria was well enough that we travelled down to Rotorua that afternoon for my husband's basketball tournament and we continued to treat her skin with her normal skin regime. 

While we were down in Rotorua her skin on her face and back of the head proceeded to get worse, angry, red and raw. 

Friday 24 January we decided to pick up her script of steroid creams and moisturisers as we had run out of options and were desperate to give her some relief to help her skin get better. 

We returned home on the Saturday 25 January and made a joint decision to start using the steroid creams. 

We did two days of treatment and Āria’s skin did not improve and both her lower cheeks and the back of her head had become very itchy and weepy. 

Monday 27 January we went back to A&E in the morning. After a long waiting period we were put in a room and made to wait for someone (Paediatrics) to assess our baby. 

Time went by and our baby’s skin became more and more weepy, raw and had started travelling down her neck. Āria also had a weeping blister spot on her lower back and on the back of her leg with sporadic excema on her legs and arms.

We were finally seen by a doctor who made us go through her history and by 4pm we were admitted to a room in Paediatrics. 

Our main concern was to get the right antibiotics for her staph infection, which we believe was the cause of all her weeping and raw skin. Not her eczema.

The doctor then come to speak to us about getting in an IV line to start IV antibiotics and look at treating her eczema after the antibiotics. 

We were happy with this solution and waited for the Dr to prepare her IV line. After one attempt the IV insertion was unsuccessful and the doctor then changed the treatment plan to prioritise her "infected eczema" and give her oral antibiotics for the staph infection. Johnny and I were absolutely gutted as we know her skin and her eczema wasn’t out of control it was the staph infection that was causing her skin to be weepy, red, raw and itchy.

The registrar then came back and agreed with the other doctors approach and proceeded to prescribe Āria with hydrocortisone for her face and aristocort for her body with an all over emulsifier to lock in the moisture.

The nurse then brought in the creams and we sought advice on how to apply them. There were no set instructions and the advice given was basically “put an ample amount on any cream on her body is going to be good” bearing in mind that the aristocort is a high potent steroid cream which should have been administered with extreme caution especially for a 5.5 month old baby. I reluctantly proceeded to put aristocort on only the bits with the eczema on her body and then lather the emulsifier on top of her body. We then wrapped her in tubing wraps for the night.

Tuesday 28 January the tubing wraps were taken off and it was then advised that another nurse was very experienced in the correct application of the creams and how to apply wet wraps, with a dry later over the top to help the skin absorb the creams better. We proceeded to apply the aristocort to just her limbs and hydrocortisone cream on her face. I was shocked that this advise was different from the previous day as the advice was to use aristocort on her body (not just her limbs) and hydrocortisone on her face. I explained my concerns about how she used aristocort the previous day to the doctor who come back and said that how I applied it wouldn’t have caused any damage to Āria's skin.

The nurse and I finished off Aria’s wet wraps and she slept in it overnight. 

Wednesday 29 January Aria’s wraps were removed, she was in extreme pain and had developed a rash that now completely covered her body. 

Johnny took photos and we were then advised to bath and apply more aristocort to her body, hydrocortisone on her face with emulsifier laid thick over top, a wet wrap layer and a dry layer over the top like a little mummy suit.

Another 4hrs had passed, we then had to repeat the process but this time just removing the wraps and only topping up the emulsifier, wet wrapping again and adding the dry later over the top.  

Āria again was in extreme pain (she was only prescribed pamol and Ibuprofen at this point), was screaming and basically knocked herself out because she couldn't handle the pain. The Dr heard Āria screaming in the hall and said she needed morphine to allow her to be comfortable when we did her last change. Āria only had one bottle throughout the whole day because of the distress she was in and wasn't able to keep her bottles down.

Advice so far from the Dr and Nurse was that this traumatic and gruelling process would be repeated every 4hrs.  

That night we had a visit from the eczema specialist who gave us different advice, that we didn’t need to do the change every 4hrs and we could just top up her emulsifier to keep her skin moist (specialist grabs some emulsifier onto her fingers and proceeds to aggressively rub it underneath Ārias face mask onto her red raw weepy skin after we have just managed to settle her to sleep).

Johnny and I became really concerned with the whole process and knew that something wasn't right. We called to speak to the doctor who reassured us that this was normal, an extreme eczema flare and that this was the worst of it and it would get better. We went to bed somewhat comforted (as we were at the mercy of these doctors and we just wanted to get our baby better) and hoped we would see better results by the morning. Āria slept in her wet wraps overnight.

In the morning the plan was to check her wraps and have the doctor examine the rash. Upon removing them we noticed it was like her skin was scalded and burnt. JK, Āria and Amika were very distressed as by now it was clear to us that something was seriously wrong with her skin.  

The doctor tried to calm me down and provide me with some reassurance but as you can imagine at this point I was angry and frustrated that our concerns were not listened to from the start.

I told Johnny that he needed to do a karakia for our baby and ask our tupuba for help. WE NEEDED HELP. As we finished doing our karakia we looked up and our friend was walking past our window outside of the hospital. She is a midwife and we called her to help come and advocate for us and for her to be a voice for our babies treatment plan going forward.

During this traumatic time doctor's, nurses and eczema specialists still believed that her skin in its current burnt and raw state still needed to be moisturised and asked which one she hadn't reacted to. JK and I believe that the emulsifier and steroid creams was a combinating factor of contributing to the state of Āria's burnt skin aswell as the wet wraps which provided a moist and heated environment for her staph to spread throughout her body causing burns and scolding.

Amika and Johnny ceased all medical treatment and we're advised to get some Kawakawa Leaf, Oats and Lavender Essential oils to soak our baby in. I was so happy that we were going to do this as it was familiar to me and I knew that it was going to help get my babies skin better, not just physically but ā wairua aswell to allow her to find the strength to pull through this mamae and get her better.

The doctor then came back and assessed Āria's skin and concluded that she thought the rash looked like herpes and that she needed to go on herpes medication because if it was untreated and the results came back positive, Āria's health would decline rapidly (scared and worried JK and I didn't want to cause any further damage so agreed to this medicine). A swab was sent off to the lab and we wouldn't get the results for three days so our baby was on herpes medication as a "just in case".

Āria was still sufferering in pain and JK and I just wanted to put her into a coma, seek help from starship and get better care for her then she had received from the doctors at Whangarei Hospital.

When we spoke to a different doctor (hadn't been involved in her initial diagnosis) we told her that we wanted our baby flown to starship to get the care that she needed. The response from the doctor was that there were too many kids there and there wouldn't be enough nurses to give the care and attention to Āria like they could at Whangarei Hospital as they had fewer kids (go figure when we had received the worst care imaginable it seemed like the biggest slap in the face on top of all of the other dropped balls that landed our baby in her current state).

At this point JK and I were extremely exhausted and weren't in the right mindframe to make sound decisions as we were too emotional and angry. We called in our whanau who met with the doctors and nurses to devise a plan for Āria's pain management, treatment of her skin (managed by us the whanau using rongoā) and trying to get the correct antibiotics for her staph which was suspected "Staphylococcal scalded skin syndrome" which made sense to us with her cheeks, neck, back of her head and the blister that was weepy on her lower back.

Āria was now prescribed regular 4 hourly oral morphine to manage her pain with top ups in between if absolutely necessary. 

Because we had stopped all medical treatments the doctors were worried that we didn't want to give Āria antibiotics. Which I stated that this was what we wanted in the first place, was to treat her staph but the antibiotics prescribed needed to be done with extreme caution as we believe she was allergic to potentially antibiotics in the penicillin family.

That night another three attempts were made to insert an IV line which were all unsuccessful and left our baby screaming. It was decided that we would have to try again the next day. At this point  Āria was unrecognizable from all of the dry and crusted skin that lay thick on her face.

Thursday 30 January we dosed Āria up on morphine (so that it would ease the pain of her burns) and gave her the kawakawa and oat rongoā bath to treat her skin (had a karakia), an IV line was inserted into her foot and she was now being given herpes medication for her "suspected herpes". We were also still waiting on the advice of doctors as to which antibiotic they were going to prescribe for her staph.

Thursday was also the first time her bloods had been taken since we were admitted into the hospital.

On Friday 31 January we dosed her upon morphine and gave her another rongoā bath (had a karakia).

Lunch time we also decided to stop giving her the herpes medication as we believed she didn't have herpes and thankfully later that night the results came back negative.

Doctors had also finalised Clindamycin as the antibiotic they were going to use to treat Ārias staph scolding syndrome and started her on her course that day. Our family was so relieved to know that she was going to get the treatment we needed for her right from the beginning.

It was only at this point that Āria was now getting the specialist care that she needed and Whangarei hospital was consulting with the paediatrics team and specialists from Starship Hospital.

Sunday 2 February and it was the first time anyone of the hospital doctors had said sorry for what we had gone through. Our baby continues to make such amazing progress and we even got our first proper smile. Up until then we didn't know whether she would ever smile at us again and thought maybe she had lost faith in us for letting her down.

Monday 3 February and we continued with her rongoā bath routine which she could handle without the use of morphine. 70 percent of her body (pictured below) has dried and flaked off and we are now maintaining her skin by moisturising her with harakeke, mamaku, kawakawa extract mixed with a kawakawa almond oil.

We are also waiting for her blood levels to normalise and hope to be able to leave the hospital sometime this week.

It's now Tuesday morning and I was able to get home for the night and cuddle up to my 4 year old daughter Āio who I haven't been able to see properly for a whole week.

This has been a week from hell and I wouldn't wish this upon my worst enemy. The emotional rollercoaster we have had to endure is one of the most painful and sickening things my husband and I have ever had to go through. From the harrowing screams of our baby girl as she looked deep into our eyes wondering what the hell we had done to her, the uncertainty of whether our baby would be ok, scared because our baby was in so much shock and pain that we thought she may go into cardiac arrest. Coerced into giving her herpes medication as a "just in case" to cover someone else's ass in the event her health rapidly declined. Scared that she may be given another antibiotic that she could react to. Leaving the hospital to go home and get some rest but worried sick whether we would return to more bad news. Worried sick about whether she will ever be her normal self again and whether we would see her beautiful smile return.

Our baby has been sent to hell and back because our so called medical professionals dismissed her parents concerns. The two people that know their baby inside and out. Our baby isn't out of the woods just yet and has a long road to recovery in healing her skin and could potentially have a lot of immunity and gutt issues from all of the medicines that she had to take to get her better. We still don't know whether she will make a full recovery.

It will haunt my husband and I for the rest of our lives that we allowed her to sleep in that hot boiling furnace suit for the night and that we didn't do enough to protect her from this tragedy. The screams and pictures of her poor little burnt body will be forever etched in our minds. The scars on her body will remain as a reminder of the mistreatment she received and the post traumatic stress that we will go through once we return home to nurse our baby back to health.

We need a team of specialists to be on her case right now as we could potentially run into further systemic infections as a result that could potentially alter her progress.

We want justice for our baby for her mistreatment, her incorrect diagnosis, for the unessasary pain she has had to endure, for any future treatment she may need for her poor little body (internally and externally), for the amount of time and money it has taken for my family to all come together to provide her with 24/7 care and for this to never happen to another baby EVER again.

JusticeForAria #NotOneMoreChild 

Tuesday 4 February

After six days of bathing Āria in rongoā we have seen dramatic and rapid improvement in her healing.

Her back was the worst area affected but is so clear, almost newborn like now and her trunk and her arms are almost healed.

Her legs are still raw and tender and she gets very itchy.

We have now added a new nightly bath in kangen water to help with her healing and to help stop the itch.

Today started off with some bad news that she may have an infection in her blood as her white blood cells were elevated.

She had to have an IV line inserted (the other one that was in for her antibiotics had seen it's days and had to be taken out. She is now on oral antibiotics) to have her bloods taken to investigate this further. After a few hours of a waiting game and consultation with other specialists regarding her bloods the doctor came back and advised us that this was no longer of concern. We were fricken stoked as she is now returning to her normal self and she has only now been giving us the meanest gummy smiles. 

We just want to say thank you to those who have shared her story so far. We see your messages, we feel your aroha and karakia and we are grateful that our babies mistreatment won't go unseen. 

Pictured above: Her beautiful smile has returned.

Tomorrow's another day my darling...ka whawhai tonu tātou ano...rest your little head on mummy's chest and continue to heal your little tinana...!!! You've got this baby girl x

Wednesday 5 February 

Scrap what I said yesterday it is confirmed that she has an infection in her bloodstream which is concerning but they will continue to monitor her closely.

Because of this new infection we now have to increase her antibiotics from three times a day to four times a day. Antibiotics pretty much wipe out the good and bad bacteria so we give her a probiotic each day to replenish the good bacteria.

She is still drinking her miraka and hasn't physically showed us signs that shes poorly (fevers etc) but as we know sepsis can come on quickly.

Poor darling on top of all of this has what I suspect is conjunctivitis (swabs were done and we still haven't been told the results) which we are treating with colloidal silver.

I also reached out to the team at Auckland Skin Clinic who I sent Ārias story to and to get some advice on a plan going forward for the natural treatment of the burns to her skin. One of the Naturopaths will be meeting us up at the hospital to take photos and view her skin as whatever is prescribed needs to be done with extreme caution given its fragile state.

A lot of comms back and forward and contacts sent to me regarding the complaints and ACC process. I have also been in touch with a coordinator for whanau voice from The Whatu Ora to help me navigate through this.

Mamas working hard to get shit done my darling. He rā ano apōpō. Kia au tō moe.