https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/tv-presenter-cradled-little-girl-26088166?utm_source=mirror_newsletter&utm_campaign=daily_morning_newsletter2&utm_medium=emailTV presenter cradled her little girl for hours after she died while on Lanzarote holiday
The couple and their family arrived on the Canary Island exhausted from the lengthy journey but there was something not right with their daughter Cici
By Stephen Topping & Graeme Murray
12:49, 30 Jan 2022 Updated 18:46, 31 Jan 2022
A television presenter cradled her little girl for hours after she died in a holiday tragedy. Danielle Nicholls and former footballer Dean Holden faced the devastating heartache after spending nine hours waiting for a delayed flight to Lanzarote. They arrived on the Canary Island exhausted from the lengthy journey but there was something not right with their daughter Cici. She was not her usual self, but there was 'nothing particularly telling' to warn the family about what would unfold. "It had all been a bit of a perfect storm for us because we'd travelled on the plane," Danielle told the Manchester Evening News.
"She was exhausted and really lethargic, but we put that down to her being 17 months and that we'd been travelling all that time. We woke up once with her in the night and she was a little bit warm. We gave her a bit of Calpol, changed her nappy and put her back in bed. But by the time we got up the next morning we knew she wasn't right."
The couple found fame in the late 1990s when Danielle became the face of CITV along with Stephen Mulhearn, while former footballer Dean was breaking into the first team at Bolton Wanderers. Dean enjoyed a career in the Football League, including a spell as captain of Oldham Athletic and Danielle scaled back her career to spend time raising their three young children Joey, Ellis and Cici. But after the family arrived in Lanzarote and Cici took a drink of water, her condition quickly deteriorated. She was rushed to a clinic on the island, where a helicopter was waiting to take her to the nearest intensive care unit. Within three hours, Cici had died. "That's what's scary for people I think - how quickly it can develop," said Danielle. "She was our most laid back, chilled out kid. She had bright red hair and blue eyes, and she was dead unique looking she looked like something out of the olden days because I used to dress her up in frills and that. I'd waited ages to have my little girl."
Cici had suffered meningococcal septicemia - a bacterial infection which causes blood poisoning, leading to sepsis. Her death on May 21, 2012, was just the beginning of the trauma and torment that would scar Danielle and Dean. The couple had to make arrangements to fly their dead daughter home, facing reluctance from airlines who feared it would 'upset other passengers'. Danielle added: "She'd never, ever left my side, she hadn't even stayed at grandma's. It felt like I was in a horror movie. I can't be scared by a horror movie anymore because my actual life was that frightening. To hold your dead kid in your arms for two hours when she had died, just because I couldn't let go of her."
Danielle and Dean returned from the hospital to the villa, where Joey and Ellis had been staying with the presenter's sister Jodie and Dean's brother Matt. They broke the news to their young sons, then aged four and three, and the process of trying to come to terms with the tragedy began. "I can't remember the first days and weeks after she died because you're just in some kind of trance," said Dean.
"The biggest thing is your personality just completely changes overnight and then you start behaving in a way you never have before. That's hard because people start saying 'oh you're not the person you used to be' and you start fighting against it. You're in your own head all the time."
Having already suffered the heartache of losing their young daughter, Danielle and Dean were left fearing the worst when Ellis came down with a raging temperature on the following night. He was unwell for a couple of days but thankfully recovered. After returning to Worsley, Greater Manchester, the couple say they were only offered anti-depressants from their GP and decided against taking them. Instead, they embarked on a process involving group therapy, hypnotherapy and a raft of coping mechanisms such as meditation and exercise, to stop them becoming 'jibbering wrecks'. The emotional strain from what happened caused huge damage to the couple's mental health and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) took hold. Danielle said: "We're all very independent, we're all living our lives without community, which is OK until we forget there are still tragedies happening in people's lives.
"There would have been a time where I would talk about it and then I could feel ill for a week afterwards," said Danielle.
"We did that initially because we were in the spotlight, and it made us ill."
Danielle and Dean struggled as they spoke to others and relived the death of their much-loved daughter. The couple say some were 'abrupt' to them, asking why they didn't act differently when Cici was ill, while others would cross the road to avoid speaking to them. Their experience has inspired them to be open and honest about what happened to Cici, rather than keeping quiet with a 'stiff upper lip' mentality. The couple found solace from a support group in Warrington for bereaved parents, known as Compassionate Friends, where they shared their experiences with other couples who had gone through the heartbreaking loss of a child. Dean was supported by the Professional Footballers' Association, who helped him to see a psychotherapist. "I think unless we all start talking about the bad things in life, people will feel like we felt we felt like aliens."
As they were coming to terms with the sudden loss of Cici, they still had to find work to keep providing for their two sons. Dean had just been released by Rochdale and was approaching clubs for playing opportunities. For Danielle, who had been working on a freelance basis, Cici's death came before she had been due to meet with the BBC about work on Bitesize. He said: "I'd been to see counsellors, and it was useless, so I went to see a psychotherapist and learned how the brain works post-trauma. I'd be screwed without that, because I needed to understand why I'd gone from being this chilled out bloke to all of a sudden this raging lunatic."
Danielle, Joey and Ellis, meanwhile, were supported by the charity Meningitis Now with the boys having innovative art therapy and anger management sessions, while Danielle also had therapy sessions. The family say they don't know where they would be without the help of Meningitis Now, which has recently asked the couple to become ambassadors for the charity. With collections at Dean's old football clubs Oldham, Bolton, Chesterfield, Shrewsbury and Walsall, they raised funds to give back to Meningitis Now and to fund sensory support equipment for their children's school. Only now, almost a decade since Cici's death, do they feel able to be a strong voice for the charity. Danielle said: "Every day you do the work. It doesn't matter how long it is. When your kid dies, you never feel any less pain, no matter how much time's gone by. It's just like you learn to live with the pain. Now is the time that I want to say to people, it's OK to not be OK, but by being that person not just by saying it. I know what it's like to have that missing part of you that's never going to come back. Just taking the chance to say I was that girl off kids TV, I had a kid died and everything went to s***, and I've got mental health issues but it's OK."
Since Cici's death, Dean and Danielle have gone on to have two more children with eight-year-old Mitzi and three-year-old Chase joining Joey and Ellis, now aged 14 and 13 respectively. Cici is always in the family's minds with photos of the toddler put up in their Worsley home as well as in a bracelet on Danielle's wrist. Dean said: "If there was a drug to erase Cici out of our memory we would have lost 17 months of incredible memories, but they were outweighed by the pain. As you get through the therapy, that changes now there's no way we'd ever want to forget her because we can manage the pain. We talk about Cici so much, there's a massive picture of her at the top of the stairs. People will ask how many kids we have got, and it's a conversation wrecker but we don't know any other way to address it, we'll say we've had five but we've only got four. Then they feel horrible for asking, but if we just say we've got four we might as well just brush her out of our life."
The couple use techniques like meditation, deep breathing and cold water immersion to help with their mental health ever day to avoid 'going to a dark place'. They are big advocates for therapy and the methods they have used to help them live with the pain of losing Cici. Although panic attacks can still take the couple back to the horrors of the day she died, they now feel able to bring their mental health back under control and avoid 'spiralling'. Dean said: "If I'm late for something, I'm going back to the day Cici died. I start shaking, I start panicking and I'm just late, but my brain doesn't know the difference. We've spent a lot of time with a lot of good people, but there are ways of resetting by doing strategies tapping, cold showers and whatever. We do all kinds of weird and wonderful things that work."
Dean and Danielle suffered yet more loss after Cici's death, with five miscarriages in the years between Mitzi and Chase being born. Covid brought added strain with lockdown robbing the family of their coping mechanisms following Cici's death, while Dean's work at Bristol City kept him away from home. But now, the pair are looking forward to a bright future with their careers. Having done live Twitch streams online for gaming on the BiigNoobs channel in recent months, Danielle is hoping to get back on TV and radio, with work in the pipeline. She also took on a comedy course last summer to try a completely new experience. Danielle said: "I love making people laugh, I didn't realise how much I'd enjoy it. It's good but I'm proper scared before I go up. I'm doing open mics and stuff because I want to learn the trade I want to get a bit of cred from the other comedians."
Dean added: "When she goes in front of a camera or goes on stage, her eyes light up. That's what she was born to do."
Meanwhile, having left his role at Bristol City last season, Dean is now much closer to home as assistant manager for Stoke City. Having lived through so much pain over the past decade, the couple say they are grateful for what they have, and are looking forward to the next chapter. Danielle said: "We've had so much sadness and tragedy, but it doesn't mean that we're miserable people who don't have a laugh, in fact quite the opposite."
