This July, Holly Middleton, of St Petersburg Florida, and her little girl Scarlett were enjoying a day out at Disney Springs in Orlando when tragedy struck.
Scarlett had a princess makeover at her birthday celebrations and dressed up as Ariel from The Little Mermaid.
Holly wrote on website Love What Matters: "Little did we know she was practising that day to be a princess in heaven a few days later.”
After they returned home from their day trip, Scarlett threw up and had a slight temperature.
The day after, Holly took her to the doctor and she was "so lethargic" she physically had to carry her little girl in to the office.
Doctors sent them home with some medication and told it was a stomach virus – but just 20 hours later, little Scarlett lost her life.
Holly said: "I called the ambulance when I thought something wasn’t right. She died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. Thankfully, I was with her."
Hospital staff tried to revive Scarlett, but to no avail.
Scarlett had caught sepsis, a serious complication of an infection which can be deadly if left untreated.
"We don’t know how she got it or why it affected her so rapidly," her mum added.
Holly was left heartbroken at losing her daughter, who she described as "sweet" and her "sunshine".
She has since started a charity in Scarlett's honour which aims to bring happiness and sunshine into people's lives.
Scarlett's Sunshine has raised funds via a Go Fund Me page to give out hundreds of bouquets of flowers to strangers.
Holly wrote on Facebook that the charity now has "funds to last us about 5 years giving out 200 flowers a week."
BAD BLOOD What is sepsis?
The condition is always triggered by an infection.
Most often the culprit is an infection we all recognise – pneumonia, urinary infections(UTIs), skin infections, including cellulitis, and infections in the stomach, for example appendicitis.
Typically, when a person suffers a minor cut, the area surrounding the wound will become red, swollen and warm to touch.
This is evidence the body's immune system has kicked into action, releasing white blood cells to the site of the injury to kill off the bacteria causing the infection.
The white blood cells and platelets form blood clots in the tissues around the cut.
Blood vessels swell to allow more blood to flow, and they become leaky, allowing infection-fighting cells to get out of the blood and into the tissues where they are needed.
This causes inflammation, which appears to us as the red, warm swelling.
When sepsis happens, this system goes into overdrive.
The inflammation that is typically seen just around the minor cut, spreads through the body, affecting healthy tissue and organs.
The immune system – the body's defence mechanism – overreacts and the result is it attacks the body.
It can lead to organ failure and septic shock, which can prove fatal.
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