Frederick County family champions Lochlin's Law in memory of their son
Lochlin's Law: A Maryland family's quest to prevent sepsis deaths
Lochlin's Law is now on the books in Maryland, more than four years after the tragic passing of a 5-year-old boy. His parents say they hope the law will prevent other families from dealing with the same pain and loss. FOX 5's Josh Rosenthal has the story.
BETHESDA, Md. (FOX 5 DC) - "Nobody should ever feel this. No one," Brooke DeSantis said in February of 2020, just weeks after her five-year-old son, Lochlin, was diagnosed with the flu and then sepsis, an illness caused by the body’s extreme response to an infection, that ultimately took Lochlin’s life.
"This is a pain I’ve never felt before, and I don’t want anybody else to go through this," Dad William said at the time.
It’s why the DeSantis family has spent the past four-plus years making sure other families won’t.
"Immediately your mind goes to, how do you solve this problem? How do you stop this from happening again?," William said Friday.
First, they created The Love for Lochlin Foundation, which led them to convert an RV into a mobile wellness unit.
"It provides everything we didn’t have access to," explained Brooke. That includes flu vaccines, which at the time, they couldn’t get for Lochlin.
READ MORE: Frederick County parents raise awareness about flu after 5-year-old son dies
Then, this week, came the signing of what’s officially called Lochlin’s Law.
"When you go into a facility, you have the comfort of thinking that providers know everything that could possibly be going on, but there are things that fall through the cracks," Brooke said, adding that that’s what happened to Lochlin, who had symptoms of sepsis but wasn’t immediately diagnosed.
So, the new Maryland law will require urgent care centers and hospitals to have training and protocols in place, to both recognize and treat sepsis.
"He didn’t get his chance to put his stamp on the world, so we’re gonna do it for him," William said.
"We’re out on a mission to see that he is everywhere because he wasn’t able to do it, and that’s our job as parents," Brooke added.
Soon, Lochlin’s Law will go into effect in Maryland, but the DeSantis family isn’t stopping there. They plan to make a push to get the law passed federally as well.