The trip of a lifetime turned into a nightmare for one San Diego family. Their 14-year-old daughter is fighting for her life after an overseas trip with her school.
"I love you, baby and just keep pushing,” Jevonnte Allen, Destinee’s father, said.
These are the words a father is sending to his 14-year-old daughter, Destinee Allen, who is thousands of miles away.
Allen said having his daughter in another country "fighting for her life" is making him "a wreck."
Get Tri-state area news and weather forecasts to your inbox. Sign up for NBC New York newsletters.
Destinee just graduated 8th grade from The Language Academy in the College Area where she studied Spanish. Last month, she travelled to Spain with a group of about 20 classmates.
"I just kept telling her it's a once in a lifetime thing to go over there and visit all those places,” Allen said.
Just a few days into her trip, Allen got a call from his daughter.
U.S. & World
"About three days later we start hearing that she wasn't feeling too good, once they made it to Barcelona,” Allen said.
Her father said they first thought Destinee had contracted a cold, but her fever was spiking up to 103 degrees.
Destinee’s mother, Whitney Williams, said doctors ran tests, told her she had an infection and gave her antibiotics.
“I would say, about a day or two of her taking antibiotics, she just seemed to have been getting worse,” Williams said.
She said the infection became septic.
“With her having a heart condition, it caused her to have issues with her heart rate and septic made her to have low blood pressure and found out that she had an infection in her organs and so they transferred her to the hospital where she is now and placed her in the ICU so that they can better care for her,” Williams said.
That’s when Williams took a flight to go see her. Allen said it took a while to identify what was wrong.
"We were just, barely got to identify that it was pneumonia, for the first couple of days we knew nothing,” Allen said.
This scare also opened past wounds. Just seven years ago they lost their younger son, Cayden, to a heart condition.
"With my son, we went through so much for two to three years, in and out the hospital, there for six months, you just have to have faith in God,” Allen said.
"My baby not coming home, that was my biggest concern when all this was going on and they couldn't find out what it is, but now as the days pass, my baby is going to be home. She's a fighter and I feel like she's going to make it happen. There's going to be a happy ending to this story," Allen added.
Williams said doctors told her she may be discharged next week, but she might need to wait several weeks before taking a trip back home.
