- A six-year-old girl was diagnosed with a stroke after her mother noticed her eyes were pointing in different directions and were not “working in sync”
- Ottilie Atkins said she felt “dizzy” after “jumping” with her sister at an indoor play center
- Doctors told her mother, Holly, that the stroke was caused by inflammation after a chicken pox infection
A six-year-old girl was diagnosed with a stroke after she complained of dizziness and her mother noticed that her eyes were looking in different directions.
Ottilie Atkins spent an afternoon “bouncing around” with her sister at an indoor play center in October when she became “very pale and said ‘I’m really dizzy,'” her mother Holly, 34, told Kennedy News and Media through The Daily Mail. “She felt clammy like she was sweaty and cold,” says her mother.
At first, the Watford, England, mom says she thought Ottilie was ‘running around too much, maybe she was exhausted and just got hot because she’s inside,’ she explained, saying that after her daughter sat down to eat, she was ‘scared started to throw up, but she kept saying that she felt very dizzy.”
Holly Atkins with her daughter Ottilie, 6.
Kennedy News and Media
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Holly said that when she started walking home with Ottilie, “her balance was off.”
Ottilie settled in at home to watch a movie, but her mother said she complained that she was “seeing things twice.”
Then her mother noticed that “her eyes weren’t working in sync.”
“She was looking forward with one eye, and it seemed as if the other eye was turning almost freely. It was really horrible to see,” said Holly, who rushed her daughter to hospital where she underwent a number of tests, including two MRI scans and a CT scan.
Then the doctor told Holly that her daughter had suffered a stroke.
“I couldn’t really understand what she was saying,” she said. “All I heard was the word stroke and I thought I had heard it wrong. I said, ‘Excuse me, can I just clarify, did you say she had a stroke?’ I couldn’t believe what he was saying.”
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Picture of a rash caused by the chicken pox virus.
Getty
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“She was lucky the severity wasn’t as bad as it could have been,” Holly said, adding that doctors told her the stroke was caused by a chickenpox infection 18 months ago. The infection is said to have caused Ottilie’s brain to swell – causing a stroke.
Although strokes are rare in children, the National Library of Medicine says the risk of stroke is four times higher in children who have chickenpox.
As John Hopkins Medicine says, immediate intervention is essential for pediatric stroke recovery — but adds, “a growing child’s brain has a better chance of recovering from a stroke than an adult’s.”
This was the case for Ottilie, who was given medication and spent three weeks in hospital recovering. He’s home now, Hollie says.
“The doctors said that a child’s brain can be easily rewired, which is how she made really amazing progress in a matter of weeks. If it was an adult, it wouldn’t be the same,” she said, adding that her daughter’s eyesight is still impaired.
“He gradually got better, but we never knew at what point he might stop improving or if he would get better at all,” says Holly. “He still has double vision when he looks to the right. Now she copes by moving her head a lot more to prevent it.”
Holly encourages parents to “follow your gut” when something seems amiss at home.
“As parents we always want to help our children, but sometimes life is full,” she said. “Never let that deter you. Doctors are professionals, seek their help.”
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Categories: Trends
Source: HIS Education