In mid-April, Jack McMorrow had a slight reddish rash on his hands, but his father guessed that it was because he was using too much hand sanitizer, which he saw common during the coronavirus pandemic. However, this would mark the beginning of his ordeal. Know its history.
Jack's parents noticed that his eyes were glazed and they attributed it to nights that he kept up with video games or television shows and, when his stomach started to hurt and he didn't want to have dinner, they thought "it was because he had eaten too many cookies or something like that, "Jack, 14, told The New York Times .
However, over the next 10 days, your health would worsen. His parents consulted his doctors online and took him to an emergency clinic that serves weekends, but one morning, he woke up unable to move.
Jack, who is in good health in the Queens district of New York in ninth grade, was hospitalized that day with heart failure, an example of the newly discovered multisystemic inflammatory syndrome linked to the coronavirus and which has been identified in some 200 children in the United States and Europe, and who has already claimed several lives.
Pain invaded his body as "a throbbing, throbbing blast" and "I could feel it running through my veins and it was as if someone had injected me with pure fire," he explained.
Instead of attacking the lungs, this condition causes inflammation throughout the body and can paralyze the heart and has even been compared to Kawasaki disease , but experts have found that this new condition affects the heart in other ways and manifests itself more. in school-age children than infants and toddlers.
Likewise, it usually occurs weeks after infection in minors who did not experience symptoms of the first phase of the coronavirus.
"We must be careful not to let our guard down and think that children are completely immune to the damaging effects," Anthony Fauci , leader of the government's response to the coronavirus, told a Senate hearing.
And now, Jack's recovery and the experience of other survivors are critical to doctors, health officials, and parents, who are eager to understand this mysterious condition.
"When there is cardiovascular failure, other things can come up. Other organs can collapse, one after the other, and survival becomes very difficult," said Gheorghe Ganea , who along with his wife, Camelia Ganea , has been Jack's family doctor for years.
While Thomas Connors , an intensive care pediatric doctor who treated Jack in the hospital, believes that "everyone is doing everything they can to analyze this from all perspectives and get the answers that parents want, that we want."
The signs
Neither Jack nor his parents, John McMorrow and Doris Stroman , know how he got the virus, but the week after his hand rash and stomach pain, about a month after he stopped going to school, he had a fever. 38 ° C and sore throat.
Immediately, his mother scheduled a video call with his doctors, who prescribed an antibiotic for a possible bacterial infection. For several days, Jack felt more or less the same, but other signs soon emerged: a swollen neck, nausea, a dry cough, and a metallic taste.
That morning, Camelia made a video conference with the family and discovered that the minor could barely open his mouth. He prescribed steroids and suggested they go to the emergency room.
There, Jack was tested for COVID-19, but they would have to wait two days to hear the verdict.
On Monday, with a home monitor, they discovered that his blood pressure was very low and took him to the Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York, where experts administered intravenous fluids and tried to diagnose his condition.
Jack did not have the typical respiratory distress of COVID-19, and then they received the result of the test they had performed on Saturday: negative.
Suspecting that it might be a condition similar to mononucleosis, the staff released him, but his mother tried to convince them to keep Jack longer after his eyes turned red and he rolled his eyes.
After a conversation with her pediatrician, the hospital performed its own COVID-19 test and tested positive.
His doctor decided that he should be transferred to a pediatric center. Her heart rate was 165 beats per minute, almost double her normal, as her heart struggled to compensate for her dangerously low blood pressure, which hindered the ability to circulate blood to vital organs.
Something known as cardiogenic shock, and Jack's was "pretty serious," according to Steven Kernie , chief of pediatric critical care medicine at the hospital and Columbia University.
But as if that were not enough, specialists also suspected that the heart was inflamed, which is known as myocarditis, and in severe untreated cases it can cause permanent damage.
By April 29, the third day the teen spent in the intensive care unit, his blood pressure medication was not helping him and doctors considered giving him additional medications. Additionally, they were preparing to connect Jack, who was receiving oxygen with a nasal cannula, to a respirator.
Then they started giving him steroids, which can have anti-inflammatory and immunosuppressive effects. Fortunately, in a matter of hours, Jack no longer needed as many drugs for his blood pressure.
Although doctors aren't sure steroids have made the difference, they have given them to children with the disease, and the results have been encouraging, Kernie said.
Fortunately, on May 7, ten days after his admission to the hospital, Jack returned home, but now he will have to go to follow-up appointments in cardiology and take steroids and blood thinners for a time.
Meanwhile, Jack and his family have undergone genetic testing as part of research into the disease, and he and other survivors will be followed up so that doctors learn to identify and treat it.
"I just want to do more with my life now that it has been returned to me," Jack concluded.
See also:
Doctor describes the treatment used in children with symptoms of Kawasaki associated with COVID-19
Doctor explains differences between coronavirus symptoms and Kawasaki disease in children
Bruises and blisters on the feet, a new symptom of the coronavirus?
Related Video: These are the symptoms of COVID-19 in children, similar to Kawasaki disease