It is always a tragedy when a young person dies, especially when their death could have been prevented.
Victoria Hills, a 20-year-old music and sound production student at Bournemouth University in the UK, passed away on February 4th of this year as a result of an ear infection. The young woman knew she was ill but had put off visiting the doctor because she could not afford the £8.60 ($12.20) prescription she would have needed to treat her illness.
Though she was a recipient of student loans, Hills had not yet received the payment that was due, meaning did not have the sufficient funds to seek medical help.
Now, in the wake of her death, Hills' family hope that her story will encourage other students and young people to visit the doctor or hospital if they suspect they might be ill, no matter how trivial or harmless the condition may seem.
"Victoria was so full of life. She had been in her church choir for 11 years and always played in school concerts. Music was everything to her," said her mother, 52-year-old Tracey Hills.
"She loved her two dogs and walking them on the beach. Everyone has a story about how she helped them. She even saved her friend’s life, but never mentioned it.
"The irony is that that week I’d started on an immunosuppressant drug and she hadn’t wanted to come home and make me ill.
"She started getting colds from when she moved to uni. She always caught them and everyone had fresher’s flu and this carried on the whole first term. At some point, she thought she had an ear infection, but she said there was no point going to the doctor because she couldn’t afford a prescription."
"At the end of January I was messaging her on Facebook, and she said she thought she might have had flu and was feeling a bit rough," Tracey recalled. "The last thing she said to me, on January 31 was ‘Right, I’m going to dose myself up on painkillers, then try and eat and get some sleep’ and told me she loved me. Then she sent me a GIF of a virtual hug, and I sent her a heart. I never heard from her again."
What is most heartbreaking about the incident is that Hills died alone, and her body was not found for at least a day.
The last interaction she had with anyone was on February 3rd, when she asked a friend for painkillers and told a roommate online that she was dizzy, and believed she had an infection. After that, she went to sleep, and it is believed that she died a matter of hours later.
Unfortunately, her roommates were all visiting their homes for the weekend, and only realized that they had not seen or heard from her a day after they returned on February 6th. Campus security were called to break into her room, at which point they found the music student dead in her bed.
Hills' exact cause of death has not yet been identified, though medical professionals suspect she may have finally succumbed to sepsis or blood poisoning, as one of the symptoms is light-headedness, which the young woman reported feeling shortly before her death.
Our thoughts are with Hills' friends and family during this difficult time.
