4-Year-Old Girl Blind After Being Sickened by Flu
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(IBEXNews) - A 4-year-old Iowa girl sickened by a severe bout of the flu has lost her sight — and nearly her life.
Now, her parents are urging others to inoculate their young ones from the potentially lethal virus.
“If I can stop one child from getting sick, that’s what I want to do,” said Amanda Phillips, the mother of little Jade DeLucia. “It’s terrible to see your child suffer like this.”
The tyke caught the nasty bug just days before Christmas.
“'Mom, I don’t feel good.'” Phillips recalled her daughter saying to her on Dec. 19.
Soon after, Jade came down with a fever, but medication appeared to be keeping it in check.
But on Christmas Eve, Jade didn’t wake up. She was unresponsive in bed and her little body was burning up. Her father, Stephen, couldn’t rouse her from her slumber.
“I yelled at (Stephen) — I was like, ‘We have to go. We have to go to the emergency room,’” Amanda Phillips told CNN. “This isn’t right. Something’s not right with her.”
Once they arrived at the hospital, Jade was in the throes of a seizure. Her eyes had rolled to the back of her head and she was shaking ferociously.
After nearly two weeks in the intensive care unit of an Iowa City hospital, the little girl became blind.
“She is lucky to be alive,” said Jane’s physician Dr. Theresa Czech. “She’s a little fighter. And I think she’s super lucky.”
Dozens of children are killed by the flu annually, and most of them never receive a flu shot, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Thousands of other children require hospital care.
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