Their parents died within hours of each other. Now N.S. sisters are warning about deadly form of strep
CBC
Two sisters in southwest Nova Scotia still can't quite believe how quickly they lost their parents, who died within a couple of hours of each other after contracting a rare infection.
Meta and Sammi Ross want people to know about the danger of invasive group A strep, or iGAS, a contagious bacterial infection that can progress rapidly.
Group A streptococcus is a family of bacteria that can cause common illnesses, such as strep throat.
But in rare cases, it can cause more serious infections by moving to the blood, lungs, muscles, bones, underneath the skin, or the fluid surrounding the brain and spinal cord.
"It just happened so fast and it was just such a shock," said Sammi Ross.
The sisters' ailing mother, Ginny Killam, went to the doctor on Tuesday, Feb. 20, with symptoms she was told appeared to be flu-related, said Meta Ross.
However, the 59-year-old's fever worsened and a rash on her body continued to spread. By Thursday, the Lower Woods Harbour woman was having trouble breathing.
"She was grey, like death," recalled Meta Ross.
An ambulance was called and the sisters watched as their mom was taken away on a stretcher.
"She looked at me and she said, 'I love you,'" said Sammi Ross. "And that was the last words I heard her say."
Killam's husband and the sisters' stepfather, Jeffery Killam, fell ill the next day.
The 59-year-old man had underlying health conditions and was admitted to Yarmouth General Hospital after starting to vomit while in the waiting room.
Meta Ross got a call from Public Health later that evening saying Ginny Killiam had been diagnosed with invasive group A strep, and as a result, all close contacts would need to take a course of antibiotics.
Both parents died on Sunday, Feb. 25.
Miles Purden started noticing woodpeckers taking aim at his home in North Kamloops in 2020.
Flu cases are on the rise across the province, while immunization uptake is the lowest it's been in more than a decade, two infectious disease experts say.
At his ranch in Black Pines, just outside Kamloops, B.C., Ed LeBourdais knows how to get his bulls' attention.
Anxiety is the most common reason Island students are turning to well-being teams in schools, says a social worker involved with a P.E.I. support program.
Pauline Frost, chief of the Vuntut Gwitchin First Nation in northern Yukon, usually looks forward to late January, when the winter sun returns to her Arctic village.
This story is part of Welcome to Canada, a CBC News series about immigration told through the eyes of the people who have experienced it.
Will it be sticker shock for Toronto homeowners again this year?
Researchers at the University of Waterloo say they've made a breakthrough in introducing a new trait into bacteria found in wastewater, giving them the ability to break down microplastics.
Aircraft dropped water and fire retardant on steep hills, and ground firefighting efforts were stepped up in a bid to stem the eastward spread of the Palisades wildfire in Los Angeles on Saturday, amid new predictions of wind gusts that could hit 110 kilometres per hour.
Seven people are in custody following a raid on a home on Mundy Pond Road in St. John's on Saturday.
Four people were taken to hospital, at least one with serious injuries, after a fire early Saturday in a duplex in Lower Sackville, N.S.