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MEMPHIS, Tenn. – A 6-year-old girl is in the intensive care unit at Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital in urgent need of blood platelets after contracting COVID-19.
For about a month, Hattie Lucille Shell lived inside Happiness hooked up to breathing apparatus after developing multisystem inflammatory syndrome, a rare complication of COVID-19 in children, said Garrett Best, minister at Oliver Creek Church of Christ in Arlington, Tennessee, where Hattie’s family attends.
Best said Hattie contracted COVID-19 about eight weeks ago but was asymptomatic, and then in August she started showing cold-type systems.
After an appointment with a primary care physician and a few emergency room visits, she found herself “critical” at the Happiness ICU, Best said.
“This is one of those crazy COVID-19 stories you hear about on the news, but it doesn’t feel real,” Best said. “Then he hit a real girl we know in our church and it’s just hard to believe it’s real.”
Hattie has been in intensive care for about a month and it is not known how she contracted the virus.
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“It’s amazing,” Best said.
“It’s something that no parent would or should ever want to go through.”
Now Hattie’s parents are using social media to ask people in the Memphis area to donate blood and platelets, especially an AB negative blood group.
Parents Kady Shell and Wes Shell Post Health Updates On Their Child On Facebook And ‘Beg’ People With AB Negative Blood, Hattie’s Type, To Donate Blood And Platelets To Any Bank Vitalant blood.
“Hattie’s blood type makes her a universal donor, but she’s a tough guy to match, and the city is running low on platelets,” Kady Shell wrote on Facebook Tuesday night.
“If we could be this bold, we beg all of you who are able to go donate blood and / or platelets as soon as possible,” the post read.
Vitalant spokesperson Stephanie Kizziar said Hattie’s type is rare.
Less than 1% of the population has AB negative blood and Vitalant still needs it, Kizziar said.
Kady Shell is even asking those who are not AB negative to donate blood and platelets to help people in Memphis hospitals currently overwhelmed with COVID-19 cases.
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Local hospitals reached 700 people hospitalized with COVID-19 during the week of August 23 with emergency room wait times of more than 24 hours.
Dr Sandra Arnold, head of pediatric infectious diseases at Le Bonheur, said increases in COVID-19 cases typically result in more children with inflammatory syndrome, also known as MIS-C, after around four weeks.
Le Bonheur has about five children hospitalized with MIS-C and 29 with COVID-19 on Tuesday night, but the number is expected to rise, Arnold said.
Children with MIS-C tend not to show symptoms but are positive for COVID-19 antibodies, she said.
“The case definition includes fever for a few days, a lot of inflammation,” Arnold said. “We see a lot of rashes, red eyes, lung damage, gastrointestinal damage, brain damage and the most frightening is heart and lung damage.”
Arnold said MIS-C resembles Kawasaki disease, another inflammatory syndrome, but one of the main differences is age and a diagnosis of COVID-19.
MIS-C patients tend to be children over the age of 5, while those with Kawasaki are generally under that age, Arnold said.
Follow Dima Amro on Twitter: @AmroDima.
This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal: COVID-19 Syndrome Hospitalized 6-Year-Old Girl in Tennessee
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