A TikTok influencer is grieving the loss of her 15-year-old daughter, who died following an epileptic seizure.
"I cannot believe that I’m making this video and I’m going to do my best to get through it," Laura Lee Watts, a social media personality known for her "realistic" beauty reviews, said in a TikTok video this week. "Most of you know that I have three children, and my oldest is Savannah. She’s 15 and she’s epileptic.”
Watts added, "I wanted to let you know that yesterday morning, she had a fatal seizure and passed away."
In August 2021, Watts shared on TikTok that Savannah was diagnosed with Lennox-Gastaut syndrome, a severe and rare form of childhood epilepsy that causes seizures. The effect can be uncontrolled muscle movements or loss of consciousness.
Watts said that when her daughter was 3 or 4 years old, she experienced "absence seizures," which the Cleveland Clinic says can "cause loss of consciousness, but with an open-eyed stare" and can be interpreted as daydreaming or a state of distraction.
"She would kind of space out for 10 or 15 seconds," Watts explained in her August video. "She would have those hundreds of times a day. When she first started having them, actually, I thought she wasn't listening to me."
As Savannah grew up, she experienced tonic-clonic seizures, formerly known as "grand mal" seizures. Watts said she hoped Savannah would outgrow her seizures as she went through puberty, but they only worsened.
In her latest video Watts described her daughter as "the most beautiful child I’ve ever known with the most beautiful soul and the kindest heart."
"I don’t know how I’m going to live without her," she added. "My baby."
A spokesperson for Watts tells TODAY.com that she was not available to comment further on Savannah's death. A representative of the Ventura County Medical Examiner’s Office confirms to TODAY.com that Savannah died in Ventura County, California, and did not have an autopsy.
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