'Perfectly healthy' Florida girl, 10, is paralyzed with rare brain infection and can no longer speak - four days after receiving flu shot
By PETE D'AMATO FOR MAILONLINE
PUBLISHED: 06:01, 3 November 2014 | UPDATED: 10:35, 3 November 2014
A 10-year-old girl in Florida has been paralyzed for almost a year with a rare inflammation of the brain and her family is blaming a flu vaccine.
According to Carla Grivna, her daughter Marysue was living a perfectly healthy and happy life until last year.
'She (used to) love school, she was running, playing, singing in the church choir,' Grivna told WTSP.
Suddenly sick: Carla Grivna said that Marysue was a healthy nine year old when she got her annual flu shot and suddenly became sick
Last November, Grivna took Marysue for her seasonal flu shot. She was healthy for the next couple of days, playing freeze tag with friends a few days before Thanksgiving.
The next day, Grivna found her daughter paralyzed in her bed, able to open her eyes but unable to move her body or speak.
Grivna and her husband called an ambulance, and at the hospital received a sobering diagnosis - Marysue had a rare infection of the brain called acute disseminated encephalomyelitis, or ADEM.
Almost a year later, Marysue still cannot speak and must be carried to the bathroom by her father.
Most of her day is spent in a hospital bed, which is kept in the Grivnas' living room because it is too big to fit in her bedroom, according to a GoFundMe page set up by the family.
Now the Grivnas are saying 'the doctors won’t confirm it or deny it,' but they believe the flu shot was to blame.
Paralyzed: Marysue is almost completely nonverbal and can hardly move, remaining mainly in her bed or wheelchair
Healthy: Grivna said that Marysue loved singing and playing before her paralysis from acute disseminated encephalomyelitis
'Her father Steven and I are certain,' she told Fox News, 'due to all of our research, that this was what caused Marysue’s condition.'
Research by the National Institutes of Health found that in five percent of ADEM cases, the patient had received a vaccine in the month before symptoms started.
In 2008, a 75-year-old woman developed ADEM two days after being vaccinated against influenza, eventually experiencing numbness and paralysis, before dying shortly afterwards.
However, doctors do not recommend against the vaccine, as researchers report a much higher percentage of ADEM cases are preceded by infection than their respective vaccines.
'If I get the flu I'm far more likely to get ADEM than from the flu vaccine,' said Dr Juan Dumois, director of infectious diseases at All Children's Hospital.
Recovery is possible, according to Dr Dumois, but after six months the chances of getting better drop significantly.
The family is currently trying to raise money in order to renovate Marysue's room to make it more accessible, and have raised just under $3,000 in 11 days.
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Fla. mom: Daughter paralyzed because of flu shot
Andre Senior, WTSP12:56 p.m. EDT October 31, 2014
(Photo: Charles Krupa/AP)
TAMPA, Fla. – A Bay area mother spends her day caring for a bedridden daughter who can no longer walk and has very little vocabulary. She blames it on the flu vaccine.
"She (used to) love school, she was running, playing signing in the church choir," said Carla Grivna.
In their home in the Town 'N Country area, Grivna says the nightmare started last November when she took her daughter to get her routine flu shot.
Four days after getting the vaccine, Marysue fell ill with a rare viral infection of the brain called Acute Disseminated Encephalomyelitis (ADEM).
How did an otherwise healthy 9-year-old suddenly become so paralyzed that her father has to carry her?
Her family says it was because of the flu shot.
"It can be triggered by a virus it high fever or by a vaccination," said Grivna.
Mother blames flu shot for daughter's ailments
The disease, which is similar to multiple sclerosis, may appear following vaccination or bacterial infection.
"It can just appear out of the blue or after maybe a surgical procedure, said Dr. Juan Dumois, director of infectious diseases at All Children's Hospital. "It's otherwise unexplainable."
He says developing the illness, for which there is no way to predict or prevent, from a flu shot happens.
With that said, he does not recommend not taking the flu shot because the disease can be contracted that way as well.
"If I get the flu I'm far more likely to get ADEM than from the flu vaccine," said Dumois, who treats a few similar cases at the hospital every year.
He also said that recovery is possible, but many times not likely if improvements are not see within six months after the onset of the initial symptoms.
While most common in children, adults are also susceptible to contracting the disease.
Dumois insists that the number of cases per year is rare with the incidence rate is about 8 per 1,000,000 people per year.
This campaign is raising money for "Help build My Room After A.D.E.M."
http://www.gofundme.com/g5lbzg