On January 20th of 2020, our 5-year-old son Lochlin passed away suddenly from complications of Flu-Sepsis. Lochlin developed mild flu like symptoms the evening of Friday January 17th after returning home from school. On Saturday and into Sunday he was feeling better and was even up running around with his brothers. However, by Sunday evening he started to feel worse and seemed to have lost his app
etite. Lochlin was complaining of severe muscle pains in his legs making it difficult to walk, had a mild fever, and was low on energy. Sunday night we took him into an Urgent care where he was diagnosed with Influenza Type A. We were instructed to take him home, give him fluids and if he was not better in the morning to take him into emergency room. The next morning, he was not feeling any better and his muscle pains had increased to the point where he refused to walk so, we took him to the emergency room. Unfortunately, at that point it was too late. He started to go into Septic shock and the medical staff was unable to save him. He passed away shortly after. This was a devastating blow to our Family. However, it was also an eye-opening experience. We knew that we had to do something, get the word out, and make sure that this type of tragedy did not happen again in our community. Since Lochlin’s passing we have set out on a mission to educate and protect as many people as possible from the deadly impacts that infectious diseases can have on our communities. We started this Non-profit organization, The Love for Lochlin Foundation Inc, which is dedicated to fulfilling that mission. We have taken a two-pronged approach at fighting the spread of infectious diseases; one is through vaccination clinics that we conduct in the low-income and underserved areas of our community where people do not have the means or awareness to get vaccinated, along with getting flu vaccines into all schools making it easier for children to get vaccinated. The second is through legislation to help get protocols and testing for SEPSIS put into place for all medical practices. 1 out of 3 deaths in hospitals are caused by sepsis. By implementing protocols and improving testing and awareness we aim to reduce that number dramatically. As we look to the future, we are growing our organization and accelerating our efforts to assure that we can help protect, educate, and drive awareness to the impacts of these infectious diseases. We have established partnerships with the county Health Department along with other local health organizations to increase our mobile clinic volume and overall outreach to the community. Our goal over the next three years is to scale our efforts to the state level so that we can protect as many people as possible from experiencing the pain that our family has endured. By focusing our efforts on prevention and partnering with other organizations we hope to achieve all time lows in deaths and hospitalizations related to infectious diseases. We also know that our strength lies not only in the words we stand by, but most importantly through the actions of our initiatives. Which is why our organization is determined to make a difference and win the battle against infectious diseases in the name of our son, Lochlin DeSantis.
In 2020 we conducted over 35 flu vaccine clinics administering over 750 free flu vaccines in low-income areas of Frederick County. We also held multiple clothing drives/distributions giving away over $5000 in clothing. On top of that we partnered with other organizations in the county to support and help run food distributions which provided over 3.6 million meals in effort to promote healthier living for people in need. For this year we have continued our outreach and clinics, as vaccines have become available for COVID-19 we have been working hard to assure that everyone in our community can receive them. We have helped over 4000 people get their vaccine appointments scheduled and have conducted 15 vaccination clinics since early March administering over 800 COVID vaccines to date.
We hope that you too will join us in our fight against infectious diseases! Get educated, get vaccinated, and ask more questions! Together, we can accomplish anything!
The Love for Lochlin Foundation Inc is a Registered 501(c)(3) Non-Profit Organization based in Frederick, MD. View our Guide Star Profile here:
https://www.guidestar.org/profile/85-3795682
