ENCEPHALITIS CASES

Encephalitis Cases

Destany

Hi, my name is Donna and my daughter is Destany. Destany was born a normal child. She had a few illnesses but nothing really major, at least not until April of 2001. Destany was only 2. She had been sick with an ear infection and fever and I had taken her to the doctor on Tuesday. They gave her some medicine and sent her home. Well we gave her the medicine and some Tylenol for the fever. It was a long night because her fever was so high and she was restless. The next morning she got up and was playing with the movies and put one in to watch it. Then on her way back to me she collapsed in the floor. I thought she had just tripped so I got up and went to her and picked her up and she collapsed. This concerned me so I put her on the couch. I looked at her and her right arm was limp. This concerned me so I called her pediatrician and they said bring her into the office. I called my husband and he picked us up.

I was just not happy with this. My mother in law worked at a doctor's office at the time. So we took her there. They examined Destany and took x-rays to see if she fractured her arm. While they were looking at her x-rays, Destany had a seizure in the doctor's office. God was telling us something that day and put us there for a reason. I had never seen a seizure or experienced one. The doctor's office called the ambulance and we were taken to LeBehoneur Children's' Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee. We live in Covington, Tennessee so we didn't live too far away. When we got there she had another small seizure. They did an MRI, EEG, spinal tap and a ct scan to determine what she had. They did blood work and still couldn't find out what was wrong. The MRI and eeg showed that she had two lesions on the brain and was having seizures and diagnosed her with viral encephalitis. They called in the infectious disease doctors and they put her on all kinds of medication.

At this point Destany couldn't walk, talk, eat or even smile. This just broke our heart to see our little girl do nothing but lay there. She started improving and getting better. They were going to do a swallow test to see if she could start eating by mouth but she failed this one. Then all of a sudden she started running fever and caught pneumonia while in the hospital. Her fever hit 104.8 and would not break. They didn't expect her to make it out of this because her fever wouldn't break. Finally it did. They did another swallow test after this and she still failed it so they had to put a G-tube in her (hers was a mickey button). They sent some of her fluids from her spinal tap to CDC to see if they know what caused this and they still to this day don't know what caused any of this.

We came home after being in the hospital for 5 weeks and 4 days. She has speech therapy, occupational therapy and physical therapy. It is now December and she doesn't have the tube anymore it was taken out in October before her third birthday, which is October 29. She has just started rolling to get where she wants but the right arm is still real weak. Both her legs are going pretty good. She will also scoot to where she needs to go. We go back in April to do another EEG to see if she is seizure free and if so they are going to wean her off her tegretol. Our goal is to have her walking by next Christmas. She is talking back on the normal 3 year old. She is learning her ABC's and colors and how to count. She is a very smart little girl. May God bless each and every one of you who has gone through a traumatic experience like this.
Thanks,

Donna
Tennessee, U.S.A.

Posted: February 14, 2002

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