Emergency Room Series: Cerebral Palsy.

I keep wondering why people make sickening decisions that sometimes comes back to haunt them.

A young boy was admitted to the emergency unit. I haven't seen a child look so sick before. The child was so emaciated, thin and pale looking. The palms and feet were oedematous and weighed just 10kg despite his age of 11years. He couldn't walk, talk, eat, poo or wee on his own. He was born with Cerebral Palsy.


The father claimed the child had been stooling for a few days and wasn't making enough urine. Did you give at least Oral Rehydration Therapy(ORS)? He said no and that they 'thought it would go' after giving him flagyl. A child shouldn't never be left unattended to when stooling. It affects them more than adults.


Anyway, we tried to get a vein to no avail. The veins had all collapsed due to severe dehydration. We tried everywhere, hands, legs, arms, nothing worked. We had to get blood samples from the femoral vein which is a big vein around the groin( penis area )

Finally we got a vein in the arm, he had fluids to rehydrate him. We had to be extra careful so as not to overload his weak heart. His test results came out to be fine, fair blood level, no malaria or infection and we didn't know why he was stooling because the parents said they didn't feed him anything unusual. It was only the electrolyte count that was very poor, which means the stooling had affected his kidneys and caused something we call acute kidney injury. 

He was also placed on oxygen because he was having 'Cheyne–Stokes breathing'. Its a type of breathing in which a person takes deep breaths and stops breathing and after a while starts breathing again and is characteristic of someone dying. 

 After a while he started having epileptic seizures. It wasn't surprising because children with cerebral palsy usually have epileptic seizures.
He had some injections to stop the seizures but they didn't stop. Oxygen saturation began to drop rapidly, he started gasping and the heart stopped. 

His mother screamed and started rolling on the floor. We had to call security to send his parents out of the cubicle. We commenced CPR immediately. For about 20mins, we gave CPR, then we stopped. He was gone. We knew death was imminent. His prognosis was very poor from the beginning. Everything happened so fast. 

He died within two hours of being brought to the ER. 

When the parents were told, they were devastated but were a bit relieved he had gone to rest because the boy had been suffering all his life.

Cerebral Palsy is a neurological disorder caused by a non-progressive brain injury or malformation that occurs while the child’s brain is still under development in the womb. Cerebral Palsy affects body movement, muscle control, muscle coordination, muscle tone, reflex, posture and balance. Most children who have it might not be able to walk, talk, eat, poo or wee or learn on their own without special assistance. Some of them also have poor eyesight. 

The brain damage is permanent and irreversible and such children can only be cared for but can't be cured. Some of the children can gradually learn to do minor things on their own if they are rehabilitated in time. 

It is usually caused by a problem in the brain developing during pregnancy or a complication during delivery. In the case of this child, the mother said it was during delivery. She said she gave birth in a church and her labour was prolonged. Instead of them to take her to the hospital, they kept telling her to push. She said she gave birth in church because she had been trying to conceive for years and the family advised her to . The child was already hypoxic(lacking oxygen) when he was delivered and had to be rushed to a hospital because he wasn't breathing well and didn't cry at birth.

Obviously the lack of oxygen due to the prolonged labour had caused some level of damage to his brain. 

I felt bad for the parents because they must have been through a lot caring for him and he was their only child. The parents were not young either. The boy must have been suffering too. 

Pregnancy is a tedious process that requires a lot of physical, psychological and spiritual work and I dont know why someone will go through that for 9months and throw everything to the dust because of some religious or ethnical beliefs. Why do people deliver in churches, mosques and at home? It makes no logical sense to me. Why would you risk your life and your unborn child? 

Are the instruments they use there even sterile or clean. A lot of women have lost their lives while giving birth in religious homes and some develop severe complications later. Why is it difficult to deliver at an hospital or local health centre if one can't afford a private hospital. Its for your safety and the baby's.
There are so many children living with cerebral palsy around us. If you are a parent of a child with the condition, may God continue to strengthen you because it's not an easy task at all. 

Most of such parents don't work anymore so as to be able to care of the child at home. If you know anyone with such a child, please endeavor to show them love and care. Have a great day.

Jesus Christ!!!!..This got to me!!!