by Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D., Childrens Health Defense:
The parents of the 6-year-old West Texas child who died in a hospital after testing positive for measles shared their story with Children’s Health Defense’s (CHD) Polly Tommey and Brian Hooker, Ph.D., in a live interview recorded Saturday in Seminole, Texas.
The parents of the 6-year-old West Texas child who died in a hospital after testing positive for measles shared their story with Children’s Health Defense’s (CHD) Polly Tommey and Brian Hooker, Ph.D., in a live interview recorded Saturday in Seminole, Texas.
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Tommey and Hooker made the trip to Seminole, where the parents live, to see for themselves what was happening in the West Texas measles outbreak. Seminole is in Gaines County where the number of measles cases is highest, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services.
The mother of the child who died on Feb. 26 said her last interaction with her daughter involved trying to give her a drink of water.
“I just remember before they wanted to put her on the ventilator that she was very thirsty,” the mother recalled. “Her mouth was all sticky and I wanted to give her water but they didn’t let me.”
On today’s episode of “Good Morning, CHD,” Tommey, CHD.TV program director, and Hooker, CHD’s chief scientific officer, showed the footage from their in-person interview with the parents.
“This is their story,” Tommey said. “This is how they wanted you to hear it from them.”
The parents said that when their daughter first became sick, they knew she had measles because they knew that other children in their community had it and that “measles were going around.”
They took their daughter to see a doctor two days after her rash appeared. The doctor gave the mother “something for her cough” and sent her home with instructions to give her Tylenol to control the fever.
The girl’s measles started going away, but her fever kept getting worse.
The mother said, “Then I just noticed one morning that she was saying she was getting very tired and I was just noticing her breathing wasn’t normal. And that’s when we just decided to go to the emergency [room] and get it checked out.”
She said there wasn’t anything “very bad” happening at that point. “It was just something I was concerned about.”
Hospital said child had pneumonia
At the hospital, staff asked whether the child was vaccinated with the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine. The parents said she wasn’t.
The hospital staff determined she had pneumonia in her left lung. “They said if it would get worse, they would probably drain the fluids and it would get better,” the mother said. “But they never did. I don’t know why not. They didn’t tell us.”
The child was transferred to the intensive care unit (ICU). The mother said:
“Just before she got into ICU the one nurse mentioned … breathing treatments, but that’s when they transferred her downstairs. And then I asked the nurse later if they were still going to do some breathing treatments and she just said that it wasn’t going to do her any good.”
The nurse didn’t explain how it was decided that breathing treatments would not help the girl.
The girl’s measles were mostly gone by the time she was admitted to the ICU, according to the parents. There was only “a little bit” on her arms and legs. Her face, stomach and back were already clear.
Hospital staff chose to put the child on a ventilator. The parents said they could visit her during the day, but not at night. The mother said:
“They just told us they were going to rent us a hotel nearby and that’s where we were supposed to stay — spend the night — because the room was very small. There wasn’t anything in there that we could sleep on. There were barely two chairs in one corner.”
When the parents left for the hotel that evening, hospital staff sedated the child and intubated her.
According to the Cleveland Clinic, intubation involves inserting a tube through a person’s mouth or nose, then down into their airway so the patient can receive oxygen from a ventilator, a machine that blows oxygen into the airway and lungs.
The child was “asleep” — as in, sedated — until her death.
Tommey asked, “What was the last thing she said to you?”
The parents looked at one another as they tried to remember.
“I don’t know,” the mother said. “I just remember before they wanted to put her on the ventilator that she was very thirsty. She was very thirsty. Her mouth was all sticky and I wanted to give her water, but they didn’t let me.”
The mother broke down in tears. “Take a moment. I’m sorry,” Tommey said. A community member came and hugged the mother. The father also became teary.
“I’m so sorry,” Hooker said. Tommey asked if the parents would like to stop the interview.
“That’s OK,” the mother said.
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