After experiencing a harrowing ordeal involving her young son, a mom turned to social media to share her experience in hopes it could help others. The boy baffled doctors for five days, experiencing agonizing and unusual symptoms, while the medical staff struggled to provide answers. It was so bad that the child even thought he was dying before the family was finally able to receive a diagnosis.
Natasha Durling wasn’t too concerned when her son Oliver began feeling tired and run down on a Thursday after a long day. However, by Friday night, his illness progressed to vomiting and diarrhea, and his condition was rapidly getting worse. The Canadian mother began to worry as Oliver continued to deteriorate, eventually leading to the young boy being the sickest he’d ever been with agonizing symptoms.
By Saturday morning, Oliver was weak with bloodshot eyes, a high fever, sore muscles, and swollen lips that were cracked and bleeding. Then, by Sunday morning, Oliver was lethargic, wouldn’t eat, and was still in pain, so the Canadian mom called the non-emergency phone number for medical inquiries. She was told to make an appointment with a doctor if the boy’s fever lasted for more than five days.
Sadly, Oliver’s condition continued to worsen. By Monday morning, the little boy had stopped eating and drinking. A rash had also begun to appear on his face and neck and his lymph nodes were swollen. It was at that point that a panicked Natasha rushed the boy to the hospital, where she said doctors struggled to make a specific diagnosis despite the harrowing symptoms.
Fearing he could have measles, a nurse put Oliver in quarantine. However, with his vaccinations up to date and no white spots appearing in his mouth, a symptom typically present in people with measles, Oliver’s symptoms just didn’t seem to match the diagnosis entirely, the Daily Mail reported. So, doctors attributed Oliver’s illness to a virus and sent the boy home, despite “his high fever, rash, dehydration and being in absolute agony,” his mother recalled.
Natasha was instructed to give Oliver Tylenol and Benadryl and bring him back if he got worse. Sadly, worse came the very next morning when Oliver wouldn’t get out of bed. “He [said] his legs hurt too bad and that he thinks he’s dying,” his distraught mother recalled, explaining that, by then, her son was “covered from head to toe” in the worst rash she had ever seen and his fever remained high despite medications to bring it down.
Natasha took Oliver back to the hospital, and again, the boy was quarantined for a possible case of measles, but again, a doctor said it couldn’t be measles as Oliver was vaccinated. So, again, the symptoms were chalked up to a virus, and Natasha was again told to take him home, but she wasn’t having it. “At this point, I [lose] my s**t,” she admitted. “I demand that he gets, at the very least, blood work done and get some fluids into his obviously dehydrated body!”
Natasha also demanded that Oliver see a pediatrician, who she said became “very concerned” and “completely perplexed” by her son’s baffling condition. Oliver was given IV fluids, and a urine sample was requested. “As he’s peeing, he starts to panic yelling that he can’t see and that he’s blind, then gets right stiff, shakes and drops in my arms,” Natasha wrote in a Facebook post, sharing the frightening ordeal. “At this point, the nurse grabs him from me and I grab his IV pole and race to the ICU where he has doctors and nurses trying to figure out what the hell is going on with him.”
Finally, the medical staff came to the conclusion that Oliver had a rare inflammation of the blood vessels that most often affects children under five years old. The condition is called Kawasaki disease, named after the Japanese pediatrician who discovered it. It typically manifests as a body rash, fever lasting at least five days, red eyes, and swollen lymph nodes, lips, tongue, feet, and hands. After receiving the diagnosis, Oliver was admitted to the hospital for treatment.
“He goes through blood infusions and screams in pain all night from his inflamed blood, stomach pain, and inflamed joints, and he throws up several times,” Natasha wrote, further describing the harrowing ordeal Oliver faced. Thankfully, however, relief was on the horizon as the mother added, “The next morning his rash is gone, and he’s feeling a lot better!”
With the proper treatment, Oliver’s symptoms improved. As his fever dropped, the hospital wanted to send him home, but Natasha refused to leave, explaining he still had mild anemia and his blood was “all messed up.” So, he stayed, and that evening the mother learned from a nurse that Oliver’s urine sample had tested positive for measles. So, the boy, who shockingly had both measles and the rare Kawasaki disease, was placed in quarantine again.
According to Natasha, Oliver is believed to be the only known case of having caught measles and Kawasaki disease at the same time despite having up-to-date vaccinations, prompting her to urge other parents to “trust their gut” when something doesn’t seem right with their children. Had she not made demands of the medical staff, we shudder to think how this already harrowing ordeal could have ended. Luckily, that’s not the case.
The mom explained on GoFundMe that Oliver will have to go back to the hospital regularly for doctors to monitor his heart and watch out for complications, which can include aneurysms and heart attacks, and that he was taking aspirin daily, but he was on the mend — and his mother’s intuition definitely played a part. Indeed, patients — or in this case, their parents — often have to be their own advocates when their health is on the line.
