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Emergency Room Diaries #5: NecFac! (By Louisiana Sandusky, R.N.) by Karen Lynn Vidra, The Texas Tornado
Saturday, July 31, 2004
Rated "PG" by the Author.
A young child comes in suffering from a rare and devastating bacterial infection that threatens his very life.
We had a very bad one come in today; and we are still shaking as we think of it.
A young boy of about seven came into our emergency room, suffering from a raging fever; and it was clear that just by one look, the little fellow was very sick.
His daddy brought him in; he had him in his arms, and he looked obviously distraught as he hoarsely whispered between tears, "Help him. Help my boy. He's very sick. He may be dying!" The man had called for an ambulance, to come to his residence, but upon the way to the fellow's house, the ambulance was involved in an accident (it was raining, and the ambulance skidded on the rain-slicked road after it hydroplaned; and so the father was forced to take the child to the E.R. himself). (Fortunately, the paramedics involved weren't seriously hurt, but the ambulance was damaged, and it put the child in an even bigger bind.)
We immediately took the little guy to a table, and we were shocked at how warm he felt through the blankets. He was shivering uncontrollably, and he was diaphoretic and breathing heavily. We quickly removed his clothes, and we were shocked to find a spot on his leg that was pussy, inflamed, and downright nasty looking. The skin around the spot was discolored, an angry red-purplish color, and bloody pus seeped from a wound on his leg. Worst of all, it had a peculiar odor that told us the worst: the boy had some sort of rapid-spreading bacterial infection, and it made me think back to the time when we had a woman, M'Buti Ayala Moore-Sormiento, come in suffering from the same exact symptoms. Besides the nasty looking wound on the child's leg and the high fever, the little fellow was semi-conscious, and he was shivering violently. It was obvious that the little boy was in a lot of pain, and when we went to examine the spot on his leg, the little boy recoiled, and he then passed out. His blood pressure was excessively low, and he was rapidly going into shock.
We knew we had to do something fast if the little fellow was to have any chance of surviving the crisis. Whereupon, we contacted our burn surgeon, Akira Tadashi, and we told her that we had a kid with possible NecFac (our term for Necrotizing Fasciitis) in the E.R. and he needed to have emergency surgery as soon as possible. We also had the pediatrician, Dr. Jack Emmons, come in and look at the fellow, and it was soon confirmed that the little boy did, indeed have necrotizing fasciitis, otherwise known as "flesh-eating disease". It was a very rare, but very lethal bacterial infection that could kill in only a matter of a few short hours if the victim wasn't treated as soon as possible; and even with treatment, there was a high possibility that the victim could still die. There was also a chance of the victim having to have the infected body part amputated if the infection spread, and even if he DID survive, he would have weeks and months of surgery, recuperative time, and physical therapies to help him cope with the aftermath of this devastating illness.
At the news, we all cringed, and I had my fellow nurses and doctors lay hands upon the stricken child and we said a quick prayer to God, asking Him to spare this child's life. But whatever was to occur was now completely out of our hands, and it was placed into His. It was up to God if the boy was to survive or not, and until He revealed His answer regarding the boy's fate to us, it was completely out of our control.
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We had a very bad one come in today; and we are still shaking as we think of it.
