Help for Aliyah's Medical Emergency

On Saturday February 10, 2018 at approximately 3:00pm I received a message from my daughter Jessica that my granddaughter, Aliyah was rushed to the ER because she was having trouble breathing. Once Aliyah was admitted to the ER the nurses instantly realized that her oxygen level was at 70% and she was having trouble breathing on her own. 5 nurses, 2 Doctors and the respiratory specialist from the hospital got in full action mode and immediately hooked her up to oxygen, gave her a steroid, and an ivy was put in her arm to help her get to where she needed to be. Her oxygen kept dropping and they needed to keep increasing her support of oxygen. They proceeded to do an x-ray to see if they could figure out what was going on, but nothing out of the ordinary showed.  She was being monitored and given medicine every ½ hour and then every hour. As time passed she finally became stable so they admitted her to the hospital and moved her to a different floor where they continued to monitor and give her the necessary treatments every hour. On Sunday afternoon, the Doctor informed Jessica that they had done everything they could to help Aliyah and they couldn’t do any more, that she was at the maximum level of oxygen and that she needed to be airlifted ASAP to Miami Nickolas Children’s Hospital (NCH) to get the assistance she needed. As you can imagine Jessica broke down, not knowing what to think or expect. Questions could not be answered at that moment. The helicopter came 1 hour after and got Aliyah and she was admitted to NCH Pediatric ICU as Code Blue: Cardiac Arrest. She continued on an oxygen level of 4, several medications and multiple Ivy’s were given. She was having trouble with the oxygen, it was so strong she began having nose bleeds. She was not eating and hardly drinking anything. They lowered the oxygen to help with the nose bleeds and her heart rate dropped again, so it was increased back to level 4 and mixed with another medicine to help her not get nose bleeds. She was then swabbed and tested for many viruses and to our surprise came back positive for Rhinovirus. Rhinovirus is was they felt triggered her asthma causing it to escalate to this level. (Rhinovirus causes upper respiratory infection and cannot become systemic. It causes little or no tissue damage and constant inflammation of the respiratory tract.) Another X-ray was done at NCH and that came back as expected showing that her chest was tight and inflamed and that is why she was having trouble breathing. On Monday afternoon she was moved out of PICU to a room and continued to be on oxygen, steroids and treatments. Tuesday things looked a bit better but she was still on oxygen as well as the continuous medication. Later that day, they removed the oxygen to see if she could manage on her own; it was rocky but she was able to breathe on her own. Aliyah was finally cleared to be discharged on Wednesday afternoon.  She is now home resting and recovering and it will take time before she is back to her normal self.

This has been a rollercoaster of a ride for Aliyah’s family and we would like to relieve some of the bills for Aliyah’s medical emergency as well as continuous medications and appointments. We would also like to ask for continuous prayers on her road to recovery.

 Thank you in advance for your generous donations and prayers. ❤️