Elizabeth's Story: Diagnosed With Mysterious Polio-Like Illness

"Dr. Diane, something is very wrong with Elizabeth.”

I watched in horror as her dad carried her down the hallway and into one of the exam rooms. She looked stiff. She looked like she was in pain. Her face was grimaced. What in the world? Why was this very healthy 4-year-old being carried in? My stomach sank.

Something was very wrong with Elizabeth.

This was in June 2018. I’d seen her a few days before, during her little brother’s checkup. I couldn’t help but notice how quiet she was being. She sat still, in a corner. This was a child that usually loved to bop all over the room.

“Elizabeth, kiddo, you feeling okay?”

“She’s not feeling well. She’s had a little fever and seems under the weather,” said her mom Heather.

I checked her out, looking in her mouth and ears, and listened to her heart and lungs. She looked fine.

“I think this is something viral. Why don’t you let her rest this weekend and let me know how she’s doing next week?”

Little did I know that “next week” meant three days later, and that her dad would be carrying her in like a limp, broken doll into our office.

Nurse practitioner Tara Haraldson and I ran right behind them into the exam room.

She screamed in pain whenever her head was turned. Her neck was stiff, rigid. She hadn’t been eating much and wouldn’t drink. She was having a hard time talking. I was really worried she had meningitis. She was in so much pain she had to lay on the floor of her parent’s car to get to the office.

“Things got much worse yesterday. We took her to the ER earlier this weekend but they thought maybe it was just pneumonia so they tried antibiotics. Her neck pain started that night and has only gotten worse. She can’t turn her head and she’s hurting so much we can barely move her.”

I sent her to Cook Children’s Emergency Room via ambulance. I called the ER doctor to let them know she was coming. That physician also thought it was likely meningitis. We agreed she needed a brain MRI and a spinal tap right away.

Barely one hour later, the ER doctor called me – “It’s acute flaccid myelitis.”

“WHAT?!”  I nearly spit out my drink.

This was almost a myth. A pediatric rarity. "The rare polio-like illness that's affecting kids across the country". A disease that affected less than 1 child in a million. I’d only read about this in medical journals. What in the world was it doing in my office – heck, in my city…. in my state?

A 'Polio-type Illness'

The words rang in my head for hours after I got the phone call. I struggled to remember what I had learned about this rare disease in years past. I had certainly never seen it in person – nor had any doctor I knew.

Elizabeth’s AFM was found via her brain MRI. They wheeled her into the ER and took her straight to the MRI machine. The radiologist watched as the images loaded on the screen. She had color changes on it, spanning from the bottom of her brain (the brainstem) all the way down her spinal cord. The radiologist knew what it was in a matter of minutes, and called the ER doctor immediately.

As I sat in my office staring into space that afternoon, I’d remembered that there was an outbreak of this disease in Colorado in 2014. The headlines were splashed all over the front of my medical journals as a warning. Watch out for this, pediatricians! Keep your eyes peeled for this awful polio-like illness. Thankfully, the cases had slowly vanished and I hadn’t heard about it for awhile. Until now.

Why do we keep calling it a “polio-type illness”? Well… because this disease looks exactly like polio. Except, it’s not polio. It’s a brother of polio – not a cousin, or a distant relative – a brother. And it is a terrifying reminder of what polio used to be (and hopefully will never be again).

Polio, caused by the poliovirus, is in the enterovirus family. There are hundreds of enteroviruses. Stay with me.

The heroine of my story

Back to Elizabeth, the heroine of my story. While in the ER, they noticed she couldn't stand without severe dizziness. And that her right arm wasn't working very well. Her face was drooping on one side.

Her mother later told me that in the ER, the doctor said that she may never walk again. She may need a breathing machine for the rest of her life. She may not live. They were absolutely terrified.

Her parents ran frantic Google searches, and called families across the state. I dug up every study I could find on the 2014 outbreak and read until my eyes crossed. What could we do to help her?

She was wheeled up to the Cook Children’s Pediatric Intensive Care Unit for extremely close observation. They were worried her breathing muscles might become weak, or her brain function might continue to decline.

I don’t think I slept more than 20 minutes that night. I know Elizabeth’s parents didn’t.

We were waiting to see what would happen to Elizabeth’s body. And there was nothing the ICU doctors, the infectious disease doctors, or the neurologists could do to stop this. Steroids, antibiotics, antiviral medications, other forms of therapy – all were deemed useless over the past few years. We were helpless.

So we watched.

(This is the end of part 1. Read the conclusion to the story tomorrow.)