ST. LOUIS — Emma Espy and her Imperial, Missouri, family left Jefferson County to go camping during Memorial Day weekend.
Before the trip, her 8-year-old daughter Celeste said she had a sore throat.
With a history of allergies, Espy thought it was that.
The group stayed overnight from Friday to Saturday and the next day, Celeste said she couldn't breathe. Her family took her to urgent care.
After two breathing treatments, nothing was working on Celeste.
Espy said her daughter got worse and she was taken to St. Clair Health.
At the hospital, she was given another breathing treatment and then staff tried a fourth, but still no improvement.
The hospital then transported Celeste by ambulance to Cardinal Glennon Children’s Hospital.
"She was on 6 liters of oxygen, and they did a virus test. She tested positive for parainfluenza. She gets admitted and deteriorated so fast. She broke out with a rash all over her body, on her face and back," Espy said.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, human parainfluenza viruses (HPIVs) cause upper and lower respiratory illnesses infants, young children, and people with weak immune systems. Symptoms are similar to that of the common cold.
Espy said she knows her daughter as a sweet, bubbly little girl.
"She’s my sweetheart ... my soul," Espy said.
She also said her daughter has a lot of anxiety, which made the process of the illness slightly more difficult.
"She has ADHD, ODD, and they suspect she has autism. It was hard to treat her with sensory overload," she added.
Espy explained her daughter was having three-to-four-hour coughing fits and was on extensive pain medicine.
Espy said she asked doctors for another chest x-ray for her daughter.
"She had viral pneumonia when she came in from being sick and it had spread into bacterial pneumonia with the Strep A. It completely whited out her left lung, you couldn’t even see her ribs. In 24-hours, the whole lung was white," Espy recalled.
Group A streptococci are the same bacteria that cause strep throat and scarlet fever, but invasive infections refer to more serious cases in which the bacteria spread to areas of the body that such pathogens normally don't reach, like the bloodstream.
At the end of 2022, the CDC issued an alert about an increase in pediatric cases of invasive group A strep infections.
Espy said the infections attacked her daughter quickly. Celeste would soon go into surgery.
"I thank God there was a doctor here, he really fought for her, and he said she can’t wait," Espy said. "They placed a chest tube, they took off 500 milliliters, which is half a liter of fluid out of her lung. They put her in the ICU. Within 12-18 hours of the chest tube, she had swollen so big [that she] wasn’t even a child I recognized anymore."
Espy said the doctors told her they needed to intubate and put Celeste on a ventilator.
"I thought my daughter was going to die," Epsy said.
After four different antibiotics, Espy said her daughter slowly got better. As of Monday, she's breathing on her own and her chest tube was removed.
Espy said she believes the timing couldn't be better.
"She fought for her sister. We played a video with her sister’s voice saying, I want you better for my birthday, which is tomorrow, and I think she may come home," Espy said with tears in her eyes.
Now, Espy has a warning for other parents.
"I really feel like watch for a sore throat that was her first sign. My daughter didn’t present with a fever or rash or any signs until she was too sick," Espy said. "Advocate for them, make sure they are heard and don’t wait."
Espy calls her daughter a fighter, knowing there's still more fight ahead.
"She’s going to need home health, physical therapy, occupational therapy. She is just so weak, and she had to have a feeding tube and she wasn't getting good nutrition. We have ambulance bills, we have medical bills from the ICU," she added.
Espy said she is eager to take her little one home and they will be by her side with the recovery ahead.
If you want to help out the Espy's, here is the family GoFundMe.
For updates on Celeste, her mom created a 'Team Celeste' Facebook page.
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