Our little son, L, passed away suddenly from influenza encephalitis.

This story includes details of surgery and bereavment of a young child.

L had always been exceptionally healthy and robust.

In the past, when he had an infection, he had always had a very short period of sickness and quickly regained his strength in no time. Three days before Christmas 2025, my husband got the Influenza . Both of our sons, who were 7 and 5 years old at the time, started showing flu symptoms two days later. We noticed quickly that the fever was somewhat stubborn to fight. L did not react well to the usual medication for fever. On the second evening, he woke up crying from a nap at around 6 p.m. We noticed that his fever as over 41 °C and he had trouble standing up. We rushed him to the children’s hospital.

During the 25-minute car ride, he could not sit up well and was having difficulty reacting to our voice, although he was still eating and active before taking the nap.

In the hospital after the initial assessment, he was taken to the intensive care unit directly. Overnight, while he received all the possible medication in the intensive care unit, his health quickly declined to the point that he could not breathe on his own, his lungs started failing, and his blood pressure was struggling.

Around 1 a.m., his CT scan showed a normal image of the brain. the 2nd one, taken around 6 a.m., showed a severe brain swelling, which led to the decision for craniotomy.

It was described that his small brain was so inflamed that it pushed itself out of the opening. His little heart stopped beating after the surgery. We lost our son overnight to the most severe form of flu encephalitis. The chief doctor of the children’s hospital told us that in his 40-plus-year medical career, he has never seen such rapid development in encephalitis as L had.

We were left heartbroken at our deepest. And will keep wondering how a perfectly healthy child can lose his life overnight to flu in such a severe way. No one warned us, no doctor recommended a flu shot, and no news report warned parents about the severity of the flu. I cannot find any information on any statistics on paediatric deaths in 2025-2026 in Germany. As parents, we stood alone and were told our loss was the exception.

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Story published September 2026