As the first anniversary of the sudden death of her teenage daughter approaches, a Clayton-le-Woods mum helps mark the moment with an awareness week

Every time Sue Worth hears a key turn in the door of her home, her heart gives a little skip of joy.  For a fleeting moment, she believes it is daughter Louise and happily thinks of all the things that have happened during the day which she can share with her only child.  Then reality sinks in and sue knows her beautiful and bubbly daughter will never return home again. 

For 17-year-old Louise died a year ago and for her family and friends, the pain is still as raw as if it happened yesterday. 

Unlike some parents who lose a child, Sue had no warning.  Louise was a fit and healthy girl who had shown no signs of illness.  Instead, the former deputy head girl and Balshaws High School in Leyland who was studying for her A-levels at Runshaw College, was a victim of Sudden Arrhythmic Death Syndrome, a condition which causes unexpected cardiac death in the young. 

Sue, 49, who lives with partner Ken Jarvis in Clayton-le-Woods, near Chorley, recalls how Louise had been perfectly fine in the hours leading up to her death.  Looking around at the many photographs of her smiling daughter adorning her living room, Sue remembers:

“Louise had an evening and weekend job at the Novotel Hotel and she was down to work on the evening of Tuesday June 1 last year. 

“Louise was in a really buoyant mood as she had been out with her friends the night before and had a great time.”

Before starting work, Louise sat chatting to her mum in the conservatory of their home then decided to go to bed for a lie-down before work and asked her mother to wake her in time.  At 5.20pm, Sue entered her daughter’s bedroom and – as she stood at the foot of her bed, and with a mother’s intuition – she knew her fun-loving daughter was dead. 

“I just looked at her and I knew in my heart that she was dead,” says Sue. 

"I shouted for Ken and he started to give Louise compressions while I rang for an ambulance. 

“Paramedics arrived and worked on Louise for some time to try to resuscitate her and then they took her to hospital, where they carried on working on her, but they could not revive her. 

“At 7pm that evening, they pronounced her dead.” 

Remembering her daughter’s glowing personality, Sue smiles as she says:

“Louise was a bright and bubbly girl and we were more like friends than mother and daughter as we shared the same sense of humour. 

“She did really well in her GCSEs at Balshaws High School and was doing brilliantly with her A-levels at Runshaw and had just started looking at universities where she was planning to study International Business. 

“She was a popular teenager and the house was always full with her friends.  Everyone commented on what a nice and mature young woman she was. 

“She had her whole life ahead of her and now it has just gone.” 

It was while Sue was waiting for a date for an inquest into Louise’s death that someone put her in touch with the charity CRY – Cardiac Risk in the Young - and after reading about Sudden Arrhythmic Death Syndrome (SADS), Sue became convinced she had found the cause of Louise’s death.  The theory was confirmed at the inquest. 

Sue explains:

“It is like faulty wiring in the heart and can strike at any time.

“The frightening fact is that around eight young people a week die of the condition in the UK and it doesn’t matter if you are a fitness fanatic or a couch potato, it just comes without any warning.” 

Sue has done a lot of fund-raising and awareness work for CRY and this week (Mon May 9 to Fri 13), students at Runshaw College are holding the Louise Worth CRY Appeal where everyone will bring in £1, or whatever they can spare, to go towards CRY’s work. 

The money will be used to buy equipment for mobile screening as a simple test can show if someone is susceptible to SADS.  As the first anniversary of Louise’s death approaches, Sue says time has not made it any easier to bear.  She says:

“I don’t think you ever come to terms with it.

“When any parent loses a child to a long illness, it is incredibly sad.  But this seems harder to bear as I never got the chance to say goodbye to Louise.” 

Find out more about Sudden Arrhythmia Death Syndrome (SADS)