It’s going to be a long road to recovery for an eight-year-old Carrollton, Texas, boy who contracted a rare inflammatory brain infection after a case of the flu.
It was earlier this month when Witten Ramirez got the flu, one that the whole family had been suffering from thanks to a nasty flu season in the U.S. But when everyone else in the family was getting better, Ramirez wasn’t.
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In fact, he was getting worse.
Ramirez was sleeping a lot more than mom Desiree Buckingham-Ramirez expected, but at the time she chalked it up to the effects of the flu. But what caught the attention of Buckingham-Ramirez was when Ramirez tripped over himself one night.
By the next morning he was stumbling around and couldn’t walk in a straight line.
This was very different than the active and happy young boy his family and friends knew him to be.
“I looked at my husband and said, ‘This is not normal. I’m taking him to the ER,’” Buckingham-Ramirez recounts. “I drove so fast to the ER. By the time we got there, I had to carry him in because he couldn’t walk.”
After doctors took a look at him, they found the boy to be ataxic, meaning he wasn’t able to coordinate his muscle movements.
After some testing, doctors revealed to Buckingham-Ramirez that her son had something called cerebellitis, and it had affected part of the brain that controls movement.
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“I was devastated. I had no idea that the flu could do this. I cried a lot, but I’m not going to cry again. He’s autistic and he has fought so hard to get to just where he was and now we have to completely start all over again. I can’t believe this happened. I was in shock.”
Ramirez was put on a heavy dose of steroids for five days to combat the infection and IVIG, a therapy that helps people with a weakened immune system or other diseases fight off infections.
The infection took away Ramirez’s ability to sit, walk, stand and talk.
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According to Ege University in Turkey, cerebellitis is a “benign neurologic condition” which is often caused by a viral or bacterial infection. Influenza-associated cerebellitis, however, is extremely rare.
Symptoms of the infection include mild or high-grade fever, headache, altered mental state, as well as ataxia, tremors, nystagmus (eye condition where the eyes make uncontrolled movements), dysarthria (impaired speech) and hypotonia (reduced muscle strength). There are no known risk factors that make people more susceptible to the infection than others.
And while this infection is more likely to affect children, adults still run the risk of contracting it as well, Dr. Harley Eisman, head of the emergency department at the Montreal Children’s Hospital, says.
“Certainly kids are sometimes more prone than adults to get cerebellitis,” he says. “It’s just how their immune system and how their inflammatory system works. But adults can get it as well.”
It’s difficult to prevent cerebellitis and ataxia, but the risk of getting it can be reduced by avoiding getting the flu, so getting vaccinated is a good start, Eisman says.
Ramirez is in rehab working on his speech and mobility. It’s uncertain at this point if Ramirez will be cured or will have any lasting effects from the infection, Buckingham-Ramirez says.
As for when Ramirez will be able to go home, that too is up in the air but the family hopes to get that answer sometime soon.
“I’m trying to make something positive out of horrible situations so if I can let other parents know that this is what the flu can do – if I can help another family if they’re going through this as well – so if by spreading this message I can help one other family then I’ve done something good,” Buckingham-Ramirez says.
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