A MOTHER was completely unaware that one of her children had Covid-19 until it was almost too late.
Rosie Diven’s son, Branson, had been vomiting and had lost his appetite when she brought him to urgent care on December 10.
The boy didn’t have a sore throat or a cough, like with most Covid cases and he was sent home after receiving a negative test.
As the days went by, however, Branson was getting sicker.
“I said, ‘We got to go back,’” Rosie said.
On December 16, they went back to the urgent care center and the boy was reassessed by the family nurse practitioner.
“We walk in the door and she says, ‘I don’t know what this is but it’s not the flu,’” said Rosie, as Branson was previously diagnosed with the flu on his first visit.
Rosie and Branson were sent to McLeod Children’s Hospital in Florence, South Carolina. But Branson had tested negative for Covid again but was only getting worse.
The 16-year-old was airlifted to MUSC Shawn Jenkins Children’s Hospital in Charleston, dubbed as one of the best pediatric facilities in the US.
“As soon as they said they were going to call the helicopter, I knew it was pretty serious,” said the boy’s mother.
Yet again, Branson had tested negative for Covid, but doctors found that he had antibodies from an infection called multi-system inflammatory syndrome in children [MIS-C].
The condition is a delayed inflammatory response to COVID that can come from nowhere weeks or even months after an infection, even if someone is asymptomatic.
The disorder could be deadly as it targets all the major organs at once. It had spiked at the beginning of the pandemic when variants were hitting every part of the country.
The Omicron variant, which is highly contagious, has swamped many pediatric hospitals with a record number of patients. But many doctors had hoped the variant wouldn’t trigger MIS-C as Delta hadn’t when it peaked.
When Branson arrived at the hospital, the doctors at Shawn Jenkins checked an inflammation marker called ferritin in the teen. Normal levels are between 40 and 200.
“His was 80,000,” said Rosie. The disorder had attacked the boy’s heart, kidneys and liver.
“They said he probably would not have woken up Friday morning if I hadn’t taken him in Thursday night,” Rosie said to The Daily Beast. “He was going fast.”
According to the boy’s mother, Branson had seemed “a little out of it” when he was transferred to the pediatric intensive care unit.
Branson had to be sedated and intubated, but his mother said he had extremely high spirits before.
“On his deathbed making other people laugh,” his mother said. “That’s how he is.”
How do you prevent MIS-C?
Branson was on the ventilator for five days to receive 24-hour dialysis but says he has no memory of the ordeal. His parents, Rosie and her husband, Jonathan, stay in the room with him the entire time.
The boy hadn’t been vaccinated and his mother said that her opinion on the importance of the jab has been “definitely changed.”
Branson was taken off the ventilator right before Christmas. He was able to spend the holiday with his parents and younger sisters at the hospital.
Days later, on December 30, he was discharged with prescriptions for multiple medications.
Rosie said that nobody at the hospital had told her if the vaccine would have prevented what happened to Branson as Shawn Jenkins, along with 23 other pediatric hospitals, hadn’t finished the major study to answer the question.
Dr. Elizabeth Mack, chief of pediatric critical care at Shawn Jenkins, released the results of the study on January 10.
“The bottom line is MIS-C is a vaccine-preventable disease,” said Mack.
The study found that the one MIS-C patient who was on a ventilator as of January 20 is also unvaccinated. Of the 61 children currently hospitalized for Covid included six who are vaccinated, 28 were unvaccinated, and 26 who are too young to receive the vaccine.
“People are worried about the risks of a vaccine,” said Mack. “What they often don’t consider as a risk of disease…We know the risks of the disease and we know the risks of MIS-C. So, I think the risk ratio is certainly in favor of vaccination.”
Mack made a statement for people who downplay the risks children are faced with in the pandemic.
“If you’re a parent of a child in the hospital, one child is a lot,” she said.
For Rosie and her husband, that sentiment holds much weight. She says that she and Jonathan hadn’t immediately explained to Branson that he could have died.
“We didn’t quite come and tell him that he was close to not making it,” she said.
But she says her son has seemed to figure it out and is trying to learn a lesson from his close call.
“He’s very appreciative of everything,” said Rosie. “Everything’s amazing now.”
