Twelve-year-old Juliet from Louisiana died twice—one could say so. Juliet Daly spent four days on a ventilator after having suffered a massive heart attack that followed a mysterious condition linked to coronavirus. The doctor who treated her was saying the youngster’s heart was ‘barely squeezing.’
Daly's day started like any other on the morning of April 6. After having breakfast, she got on a Zoom call with her sixth-grade social studies class. She had been feeling unwell all weekend with twisting abdominal pains, vomiting and a fever of 101.5, but she seemed to be getting better. However, her lips looked bluish in the mirror and she was super tired. Infact, she kept falling asleep unexpectedly. On the couch. In front of her computer. In the bath.
“I thought I was feeling a bit better,” she was quoted as saying in a Washington Post report, “but I couldn't keep my eyes open”.
Her father Sean Daly dialled 911 after she collapsed. Juliet was then airlifted to Ochsner Children’s Hospital in Louisiana, where she was put on a ventilator. The youngster, who had been healthy otherwise, had no symptoms typical of the coronavirus like cough or shortness of breath. Her mother, Jennifer, a radiologist initially thought the ailment to be appendicitis or some kind of stomach bug.
The doctors at the hospital noticed several unusual symptoms— like her heart rate was extraordinarily low, jumping around in the 40s when it should have been between 70 to 120 beats per minute. And when they squeezed her nails, they turned white and stayed white when they should have gone back to pink.
As per a CNN report, doctors are seeing an increase in multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children, or MISC, a condition that experts say might be linked with the novel coronavirus. The condition that has the body’s immune system overreact and causes blood cells to inflame has affected 110 children across New York state and killed at least three youngsters in New York.
Juliet’s heart was so inflamed that it was barely beating.
Being a relatively new kind of outbreak, the hospital hadn't seen other children in this condition. But the doctors knew enough about the pathogen's effects on adults and suspected the coronavirus. Juliet tested positive for the virus.
The inflammation can prevent blood from reaching the young patient’s heart and is similar to the Kawasaki syndrome. And while treatable, the condition can be fatal and is more commonly seen among children under the age of 5 years
In April, doctors in Britain and Italy had issued alerts, and the American Heart Association warned that some paediatric patients “are becoming very ill extremely quickly,” urging providers to evaluate them right away.
On Thursday night, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued an advisory and gave the unusual condition a name--multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children, or MIS-C.
Researchers around the world are trying to figure out if the MICS condition is the same as the Kawasaki syndrome and if it is triggered specifically by the presence of coronavirus in a child.
In the case of Juliet, doctors began medication and informed her mother that her daughter might probably need a transplant. “They were not sure she was going to make it the first night,” Jennifer was quoted as saying in a Washington Post report. “It was a total nightmare,” she said.
Meanwhile, Juliet's nasal swabs came back positive for the coronavirus and adenovirus, one cause of the common cold.
The results came as a surprise as none of the other family members, including Juliet’s father Sean, her brothers aged 5 and 16 had been sick. And so, the doctors suspected that her condition could be post-viral and there were chances that she might have been exposed school had still been in session and stay-at-home orders had not yet been issued.
Juliet was then given an immunoglobulin product used successfully on Kawasaki patients. They ruled out using hydroxychloroquine, the anti-malarial touted by President Donald Trump, because they were worried about cardiac side effects given her already fragile heart condition.
As Jennifer sat in the room with full protective equipment, including a face shield, mask and gown, she was holding her daughter's hand. After being admitted on April 6, nine days later on April 15, Juliet was well enough to go home.