Doctors said Kailyn Griffin was suffering from an uncommon condition called tick paralysis.
As soon as
Kailyn Griffin's feet hit the floor Wednesday morning, she collapsed in a
heap. The 5-year-old kept trying to stand but fell every time. She was
also struggling to speak, her mother Jessica Griffin noticed.
Her
daughter had been fine when the family went out to a T-ball game the
night before, Midway, Florida, ABC-affiliate WTXL reported. Maybe Kailyn
was having a hard time waking up Wednesday morning, or perhaps her legs
were asleep.
Then Griffin saw the tick.
She had gathered
Kailyn's hair to put it in a ponytail when she spotted the insect,
embedded in the girl's scalp, swelled with the girl's blood.
She
pulled the tick out and placed it in a plastic bag, then rushed to the
hospital with Kailyn, WTXL reported. Doctors told Griffin it was an
uncommon condition called tick paralysis.
"After tons of blood
work and a CT of the head UMMC has ruled it as tick paralysis! PLEASE
for the love of god check your kids for ticks! It's more common in
children than it is adults!" Griffin, of Grenada, Mississippi, wrote in a
Facebook post Wednesday that seemed a mixture of worry and relief.
"Scary is a UNDERSTATEMENT!"
Griffin could not be immediately reached for comment. It was unclear
where or when she thought her daughter had acquired the tick, or how
long it had been on her body. Ticks are most active from April through
September, The Washington Post has reported.
Tick
paralysis is caused by female ticks on the verge of laying eggs. After
the tick eats a blood meal and is engorged, it secretes a neurotoxin
into the host, according to the American Lyme disease Foundation.
The symptoms can occur five to seven days after the tick starts feeding.
Paralysis
begins in the legs, then spreads to the upper extremities. It can
manifest as fatigue, numbness and an increasing inability to move,
according to the foundation.
In the later stages it is harder for
the victim to move her face or tongue. If nothing is done, the toxin
ultimately makes it impossible for a person to breathe, resulting in
respiratory failure.
The paralysis is more common in animals, which are unable to check themselves for the ticks.
But
human children are also susceptible because of their smaller body mass.
Girls get tick paralysis more frequently because the ticks can easily
hide in a mass of hair, according to the foundation.
The CDC
reported a cluster of cases of the extremely rare disease in 2006. One
of the victims was a 6-year-old girl who had trouble walking a week
after visiting her grandmother in the mountains of Larimer County. A
nurse bathing her after she was admitted to the hospital found a tick
along her hairline.
And last year, Amanda Lewis woke up and found
that her 3-year-old daughter, Evelyn, couldn't stand no matter how hard
the little girl tried, according to the La Grande Observer.
The
La Grande, Oregon, woman posted a video on Facebook, hoping family
members or friends could help figure out what was causing the girl's
sudden strange ailment. They couldn't, but the video was watched some 22
million times and shared more than 600,000 times.
At the
hospital that day, physician John Page saw that a 3-year-old had been
admitted with ataxia and suspected that it might be tick paralysis.
He
scoured the girl's scalp and found the insect, which was embedded in
the skin and could have been easily dismissed as a red bump.
Once it was removed, Evelyn was walking the next day.
In Mississippi last week, Kailyn Griffin had a similarly quick recovery.
Her mom's last picture of the incident showed the girl grasping two balloons in a hospital hallway.
"Look
who is WALKING out of the hospital! Everything is completely back to
normal!" Griffin wrote, including a raised hands emoji. "GOD IS GOOD!!"
