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Elica

She was doing emergency dialysis in the PICU and had only 20 minutes left when she coded...

Elica Faye was born August 12, 1998 weighing 5 lbs 12.8 oz and was 18 3/4 inches long. The small amount of hair she had was brown, with this little button nose and ears that were too big for her head, but she was perfect to the family.

Elica wasn’t born sick. She became sick when she was barely 3-years-old. It was an October 2001 afternoon when it started. Within 3 days she was at Cardinal Glennon Children’s Medical Center where the doctors thought it was the beginning of the end for our baby. They told us she had contacted E. coli which lead into Hemolytic Uremic Syndrome (HUS), in most cases it is fatal. The type of E. coli she contracted usually comes from ground beef. Where she got it, we don’t know, because she was the only one to get sick. It wasn’t an outbreak.

When her kidneys had failed her, she was doing emergency dialysis in the PICU and had only 20 minutes left when she coded. They came to my husband, family and me to explain what had occurred. They told us to call family members the outlook was grim. Her Grandpa Williams was in Colorado trying to get home in his truck (he is a truck driver across country) to his girl. She was named after him and her Grandma Williams.

They had an ECMO machine to keep her alive until the rest of the family could get there. She had less than a 3% chance to live. If she did she would be in a coma and not know anybody for the rest of her life. She made it off of ECMO but was still a very sick little girl. She lost her kidneys, had many mini-strokes and heart failure. She was away from home for almost one year. When we brought her home she was on dialysis every night, had seizures, couldn’t walk, talk, sit, or stand, she couldn’t even hold her own head up. She was on a feeding tube.

She slowly began to regain strength. First she could lift her head, then she began to sit, then we could get her to bear weight and so on. This was over a matter of a few years. In June 2005 her dad gave her a kidney. Since then, she has not had dialysis and she is making leaps and bounds of improvement. She is weaker on the right side of her body from the strokes. She really doesn’t use her right arm at all. She still doesn’t talk much. Every once in awhile she will say a few words, and she has a belly tube, and now she is walking all over the place by herself with no help.

We said from the-get-go that we would bring her home with us. With all the love, support, and most of all PRAYERS, that is exactly what we did. We have a long road ahead of head of us, but with faith we can and will make it through. We just watch Elica with her strength and say if she can do it so can we. She is our inspiration!

Elica

Location:

Missouri

Sources:

Undetermined

Disease/Disorder:

E. coli, HUS