____Oh boy, another thing to be terrified about as far as my children's health goes. This is nuts: about 25 children in California have been affected by a disease that resembles polio, but isn't polio, it's like some mystery disease that no one can name but is causing the same kinds of horrors that polio was once well known for causing. The first known case of this mystery polio-like disease happened in 2012 to a little girl named Sophia Jarvis when she was 2 years old. Her mother, Jessica Tomei, noticed that her daughter was having breathing issues and the little girl was rushed to the hospital because she was wheezing and vomiting. Can you imagine watching a 2-year-old go through something like that? Oh and it got worse.
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Sophia was at the hospital for four days and diagnosed with asthma and was discharged, but her momma knew something else was wrong and sure enough all of a sudden the little girl stopped being able to use her left arm. What?!
Even with an MRI scan doctors could not figure out what was causing the paralysis. "Sofia was completely healthy one day and paralyzed the next week," says Tomei. I just want to reach out and hug that worried mother. It has got to be all kinds of terrifying to have your daughter experience paralysis and not have any clue what is going on.
The California Department of Public Health's neurological surveillance team started an investigation and it appears that there have been 25 similar cases thus far. What's crazy to me is that no one knows what this virus or disease is, but they do know it isn't polio and it causes paralysis of the limbs. So far there doesn't seem to be a case were a patient was able to recover limb function after paralysis
Let's all say a collective prayer that this mystery illness does not continue to spread and that doctors figure out exactly what they are dealing with. It's hard to protect our children when we don't even know what we are protecting them from.
Image via Jessica Tomei
