This Little Boy Was Shaky After Hitting His Head. Then Doctors Made An Alarming Discovery

This little boy was shaking after hitting his head. Doctors then made an alarming discovery. When a little boy felt weak after hitting his head, his parents rushed him to the hospital. At first, doctors thought the little one had a concussion, but they soon discovered that his situation was much more worrying.

Like many toddlers, little Colin was a ball of energy. So when his parents, Stephanie and Dylan, took him to his older brother’s baseball practice, they knew they would have to entertain him. As a result, Dylan and Colin enjoyed a game of hide and seek around their family car.

However, amid the excitement, the youngster tripped and fell. But even though Colin suffered a small cut on his eyebrow, he immediately got up and started playing again. His parents therefore thought nothing of the incident. After all, he had already fallen several times without problem. “He’s had worse falls before,” Colin’s mother Stephanie told TV show The Doctors in 2015. “So we didn’t think anything of it and went to bed. »

However, overnight, the little child’s condition took a terrifying turn. “The next morning, I went to wake Colin up,” explains Stéphanie, remembering this upsetting incident. “He couldn’t sit down. I just thought it was the flu, but when I realized he couldn’t walk, I called my husband. » Dylan rushed home, picked up Colin and Stephanie and drove them to the hospital. In the emergency room, worried parents explain how their little one fell the night before. So doctors thought Colin had a concussion. To diagnose the suspected disease, they performed a CT scan. However, the test results were clear.

Despite this good news, Colin’s health was still in decline and experts now seemed perplexed as to what was causing the problem. When he arrived at the hospital, Colin could only move his legs. But over time, he lost the ability to sit, and by evening the three-year-old was almost completely paralyzed. The only thing he could do was breathe, Dylan said. “He couldn’t drink his bottle. He couldn’t eat his food. He just laid there,” Stephanie added. “Then his oxygen levels dropped, so the next day they decided to do a lumbar puncture to rule out meningitis. »

But once again the test came back negative, and with Colin’s condition still plummeting, his parents began to panic. Therefore, they transferred their son to a children’s hospital in Memphis, Tennessee. It was only then that doctors discovered the shocking truth about the little child’s illness. Colin arrived at the new facility just in time. Doctors told his parents that if they had arrived just 30 minutes later, his little body would have gone into cardiac arrest. Fortunately, they managed to stabilize the child and shed light on his condition. While examining the toddler, a team of infectious disease doctors and neurologists discovered a tick behind Colin’s ear. And it turned out that the little boy’s paralysis was all due to this little creature. Once the tick was removed, the toddler began receiving an antibiotic, after which he slowly began to regain movement in his feet.

Little Colin suffered from paralysis caused by ticks. The disease is caused by a neurotoxin found in the saliva of certain ticks. This is then transmitted to the host when the parasite feeds and, within a few days, destroys the nerve tissue, causing paralysis. In some cases, the disease can be fatal. But Colin was saved just in time. As soon as the doctors removed the tick, Colin started to feel better. Before his parents knew it, he was back to his normal, noisy self. And a relieved Stephanie and Dylan couldn’t have been happier.

However, his father believed that things could have been much different if they had not made the bold decision to transfer their child. “I think if my wife and I hadn’t made the decision to go to another hospital, I don’t think he would have done it,” Dylan admitted. He and his family later appeared via video link on the medical-themed talk show The Doctors, and Colin appeared to have miraculously recovered from his tick-induced paralysis.

On the show, Dr. Travis Stork revealed that while tick bites are common, this form of paralysis is quite rare. And he added: “This is not linked to Lyme disease, a bacterial infection that can cause lasting symptoms, which is also spread by ticks. This neurotoxin hangs around in their salivary glands,” Dr. Travis explained to viewers. “And so, as the tick feeds, this neurotoxin enters, in this case, Colin’s bloodstream, and that leads to what we call ascending paralysis. First of all, it starts with the legs and the ability to walk. »

Stephanie and Dylan revealed that ticks were a common problem where they lived in Atoka, Tennessee. “We get ticks all the time,” Stephanie admitted. However, she probably didn’t expect such a small creature to have such a devastating impact on her son.

Fortunately, the illness is not expected to have any lasting impact on Colin. And after being almost completely paralyzed, he now has difficulty sitting still. His parents are probably exhausted by now, but we’re sure they wouldn’t see it any other way.