ENCEPHALITIS CASES - Pamela Ann

Encephalitis Cases

Pamela Ann

I will never forget June 1st 1989 in Anchorage, Alaska. I went in to get my 2 year old daughter Pamela Ann out of bed and as I placed her on the floor I noticed she could not stand up. I checked her over from head to toe and could not see anything wrong, yet she screamed in pain. I placed her in the bathtub, and she screamed even louder. I called the doctor and he was out of town for the day, the other doctors could not get her in untill the following day.

I took her into the emergency room and the doctor told me she had a mild case of frost bite on her feet. I told him that there is no way she could have frost bite on the 1st of June on her feet and it's her ankles not her feet. I also told him every time I grab her at the ankles she would scream. The doctor sent us home and instructed me to give her something for the pain. That evening she went into grand mal seizures, she seized all night in the hospital before any one gave her an anti seizure medication. We were placed in the very back and I watched my daughter and cared for her. I cleaned the vomit out of her mouth all night long so it would not block her airway.

That morning they finally put my daughter in ICU. They wanted to do a hip biopsic on her and all sorts of other tests and I told them no one would touch her but her doctor and to get him now. Her doctor had arrived and took one look at her and went out to the nurses station and looked something up in a medical book and told me she had viral encephalitis. My daughter went into a coma for two weeks.

They did prepare us, they said that she may not be the same child and she may not know me, if and when she comes out of the coma. I knew if and when she would wake up she would know me, the whole time in the coma, every time she would hear my voice her heart rate would go up. She woke and asked for her favorite blanket. Her sight took time to come back. And yes, her personality was changed she would tell the nurses to shut up, she had reactions to her medications where she broke out in huge welts from head to toe and a 105 temp. We had to reteach her to walk, eat, talk & crawl. Through this all her eyes were going all different ways and she had tremors in her arms and could not hold her head up if she was off the predisone. she spent seven weeks in the hospital. She was on anti seizure medications for two years after that.

She had recovered so well from the outside. She is 13 now and the past two years she has had two episodes of getting high temp of 105 degrees. Her face will swell and her whole body aching, vomiting, eyes very blood shot, her back hurting, legs hurting. they have done an mri and said everything looked great and by the next morning she is great and feeling good.

This is what has me worried. She has had problems with remembering, Her behavior is not bad, but her emotions are not right. Her maturity level is not of a 13 year old. She has been struggling with her school work, she will either not do the homework or do it and never hands it in. Her teachers say's she can do the work. She is very social, and always up beat. She never say's what she means. I don't know what to do or where to go from here. If anyone has a suggestion please email me.

Robin Raveling
Alaska, U.S.A.

Posted: July 5, 2000

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