What was your daughter's original diagnosis?
It’s a long story, but I’ll try to summarize.
She was a twin born 3 1/2 weeks early and weighed 5 1/2 lbs at birth.
At 6 wks old (7 1/2 lbs), she got a respiratory virus (RSV). She got very congested and started swallowing some of the gunk. This caused her to start vomitting.
We took her to the doctor on Wed. and she was running a fever, but they didn’t put her in the hospital. By Saturday, she was doing worse and vomitting more. The doctor was not in, and a pediatric assistant saw her. She sent my husband home with glucose water to give her because they were out of pedialyte. We gave that to her 2 times until we bought pedialyte that evening.
She held the glucose water.
After we gave her pedialyte, she started throwing up again.
We called the doctors office, they told us to give her glucose water.
Basically by morning, she was despondent and her electrolytes were messed up and her sodim had plummeted to 116 (An adult would have died of those levels, but because her fontenel was not closed her brain could swell). She started seizing. We took her to the hospital, and they brought up her sodium level too fast (that’s what probably caused the brain damage).
The doctor’s don’t know what actually caused the brain damage. That’s why we don’t have a malpractice case (we tried). Some say she got the brain damage before she was born (but her twin sister is okay).
I don’t remember what the MRI says about where the damage is. I do know the neurologist said on a scale of 0-10 (0 meaning no damage, 10 meaning dead) she was a 5. My husband and I could even see the damage on the MRI because it is so bad.
However, she is a great kid. She has a great work ethic, and this will do a lot for her as she gets older She looks pretty normal. She can walk, run, ride bikes. She’s gifted at math, and she should go to college. She’s also very pretty.
She does have speech problems, but she can talk now. Reading is hard for her, but she is only a little behind grade level (4th grade) and she continues to improve. Her left side is weaker than her right, and my husband really notices this when she walks. I notice it when she swims.
That’s the summary.