“Penny was the happiest, bubbliest little girl ever,” her mother, Courtney Sherwood, said while describing her late daughter

A mother is warning parents to trust their instincts after her 3-year-old daughter’s persistent cough turned out to be a symptom of a fatal heart condition.

Courtney Sherwood said her daughter, Penny Dunn, had rarely been sick before she developed a cough in December 2025, according to Kennedy News and Media.

At first, the mother of two believed Penny’s cough was simply a seasonal illness.

“It was around Christmas time last year, she had a bit of a cough but we thought, ‘It’s the winter, it’s normal,’ ” Sherwood, 27, recalled.

“It went away for a bit and then it came back and never went away again,” she added.

As the cough persisted and became more severe, Sherwood, who lives in Gloucestershire, England, said she and Penny’s dad took their daughter to the doctor three times. However, Penny’s symptoms were initially attributed to common childhood illnesses and possibly asthma.

“We were told she had a childhood bug, but the cough wasn’t going away and it got to the point where she started throwing up from it,” Sherwood said.

She also noticed that her daughter was becoming unusually short of breath.

“We have to walk upstairs to our doctors and she was so out of breath for at least five minutes and the doctor said, ‘That’s not right for a 3-year-old,’ ” Sherwood recalled.

Penny was given inhalers, which Sherwood said appeared to offer some relief.

But over the following weeks, Sherwood said her daughter’s condition continued to deteriorate.

“The next couple of weeks she went from really happy and running around to being lethargic and refusing food. I could see she was losing weight,” she said.

On June 29, Penny was participating in a sports day at her nursery school when Sherwood learned that her daughter had suffered a seizure. She was rushed to the emergency room, where doctors discovered that her heart was enlarged and beating abnormally.

Doctors determined that Penny’s heart was not effectively pumping blood through her body.

After medications failed to stabilize her condition, Penny was transferred to another hospital and placed on an advanced life-support machine.

She was ultimately diagnosed with dilated cardiomyopathy, or DCM, a condition in which the heart’s chambers become enlarged while the muscle walls become thinner and weaker, making it more difficult for the heart to pump blood.

Penny also underwent heart surgery as doctors attempted to identify and treat the source of her abnormal heart rhythm.

Sherwood said the family initially believed the procedure had worked.

“We were all so excited because she came out of surgery and her heart rate was so stable,” she recalled.

“I thought, ‘Our little girl is going to come home,’ we thought we were finally getting somewhere,” she continued.

But their optimism quickly turned to fear when Penny developed new complications.

“She seemed completely fine, but we went in the next day and her abdomen was really hard,” Sherwood said.

Soon after, doctors discovered a change in the readings monitoring Penny’s brain.

“We got to the hospital on the Monday morning. I looked at her brain activity chart and I could see something was different,” Sherwood recalled.

“My heart dropped because I knew you can fix the heart but you can’t fix the brain,” she said.

CT scans ultimately showed that portions of Penny’s brain and bowel had died after being deprived of adequate blood flow.

Doctors told Sherwood and Penny’s dad that their daughter would not have a meaningful quality of life if she survived.

The couple ultimately made the decision to remove Penny from life support. She died on July 6.

“I do not blame anyone because they tried their best — they were phenomenal,” Sherwood said.

“We don’t know why this happened. The doctor said there’s pages and pages of things that could’ve caused this,” she said, adding that Penny’s doctors also said that a cold may have triggered the condition.

“Penny was the happiest, bubbliest little girl ever. She truly became my best friend,” Sherwood said of her daughter.

“She was just so happy and so clever. She was never ill. I think she had had one cold before this in her whole life. She was a healthy child,” she added.

Following her daughter’s death, Sherwood said she would like to see greater access to heart testing for children in primary care settings.

“I think there should be a children’s EKG machine in every [doctor’s office],” she said.

Above all, she is encouraging parents to keep seeking answers when they believe something is wrong with their child.

“For parents — definitely trust your gut,” Sherwood said. “If you’re not happy, get a second opinion.”

Source: https://people.com/mom-says-daughters-lingering-cough-was-first-sign-of-fatal-heart-disease-12115199