Tess, 11, had asthma, so Ms MacLaverty went to check on her.
Little did she know this would be the beginning of a 14-month nightmare, which would see Tess coughing an average of 100 to 150 times a day.
Tess’s throat became sore and her life disrupted – by the end of the summer she was unable to go to school or to see friends in Glasgow, even when lockdown restrictions allowed it.
"She was despairing at times, sometimes she would just cry,” Ms MacLaverty said.
"It had a huge impact on her ability to socialise, and she would come home from school almost crying because her throat was so sore.”
Doctors were stumped. The consensus ruled out asthma and Covid-19, but consultation after consultation couldn’t seem to bring up an answer.
Specialists suggested treatments including steroids, speech and language therapy and diet change – all to no avail.
Then one day in March 2021, after 14 months of Tess’s coughing, Ms MacLaverty discovered a YouTube video about a young girl, Bethany, living in the US.
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