How a four-year-old boy's 'bug' ended with him losing a leg
WARNING, CONFRONTING: When four-year-old Jonathin Perez complained of feeling tired and achey, his parents thought he had come down with a mild fever.
But the boy from Indianapolis, US, had a much more life-threatening illness.
He had developed necrotising fasciitis, a flesh-eating bacterial infection that turned his leg black and ended in an eventual amputation.
Jonathin’s mother, Katie Wilson-Perez, has released confronting images of her son’s leg before it was amputated, warning other parents to pay attention to symptoms that may seem minor at first.
Her little boy had returned home one day feeling tired and a bit achey, The Sun reports.
Two days later, when he still wasn’t feeling better, they took Jonathin to a doctor, who prescribed Tylenol and Ibuprofen, telling his concerned parents he’d probably picked up a bug.
But the aching limbs persisted, and by the next day, he couldn’t walk.
He was taken to Riley Children’s Hospital for blood tests – and suddenly went into septic shock.
Rushed into intensive care, doctors told Katie and her husband, Evodio, that their son may not live.
He was placed into an induced coma and given antibiotics to fight the infection, which is rare but potentially life-threatening.
“Both limbs were extremely swollen and the doctors initially had to go in and release the fluids so that the life-saving antibiotics could get to those limbs,” Katie told The Sun.
“Unfortunately, the damage had already been done and his leg never recovered.”
His right leg had turned black and had to be amputated at the knee, while his other limbs, also at risk, were saved using skin grafts.
From there, Jonathin had to undergo several more surgeries, including plastic surgery, before being released from hospital in June.
Since then, it’s been a long road of recovery, with three-weekly physiotherapy sessions and meetings for a prosthetic lower leg.
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Necrotising fasciitis can be caused by something as tiny as a small cut, but if not diagnosed and treated early, symptoms can quickly worsen.
Remarkably, doctors have been unable to pinpoint exactly what caused Jonathin’s bacterial infection.
“It usually enters the body following surgery or injury , or through cuts, abrasions or insect bites, but Jonathin had none of these,” Katie told The Sun.
Katie has set up a Facebook page, Jonathin’s Journey, to follow his recovery and progress post-amputation.
“We had three different doctors take us aside and tell us that our sweet, energetic, and sociable little four year old was very sick, ‘probably the sickest kid in the hospital’ and that “they didn’t expect him to make it,” Katie wrote in May, explaining why she was sharing confronting photographs of her son’s blackened leg.
“I never imagined I would ever hear those words in my life. This kind of thing happened to other people, not me. I’d read about it, get sad, hug my kids, and then eventually forget about it.
“But this time it did happen to me. And I will work my hardest to help prevent anyone else from ever feeling what I felt in those moments.”
On July 21 Katie posted a picture of Jonathin competing in his first five-kilometre race.
“I am in tears!,” she wrote. “One month ago we were just excited to be taking him home.
“Today I watched complete strangers stop, in the rain, to cheer him on.”
