As children recover, families of COVID patients remind us how coronavirus affects kids

Almost a full year into the coronavirus pandemic, Jennifer Moore feels the need to remind people of a simple fact:

COVID-19 affects children.

“We can tell you it does,” says Moore in a video interview from her home in Fresno. Her 5-year old son, Bryce, was admitted into the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit at Valley Children’s Hospital in January with Multisystem inflammatory syndrome or MIS-C, a serious condition related to COVID-19 in children.

More than 16,000 children under the age 19 have tested positive for coronavirus in Fresno County since the start of the pandemic. That’s more than the number of positive cases in people over age of 60, according to the county’s COVID dashboard.

Valley Children’s Hospital has seen 454 patients hospitalized for COVID or related illness since early May.

Pandemic fatigue aside, the concern should still be very real, Moore says.

“Kids are still getting sick.”

For patients like Bryce, the affects might not show up in the flu-like symptoms we’ve come to expect from the coronavirus.

In fact, Bryce didn’t show any symptoms when his mother and father tested positive for COVID-19 in November. He tested negative at the time.

His symptoms appeared weeks later and included severe neck pain, abdominal pain and diarrhea, and a rash. By the time he was admitted to the PICU — over a three-day weekend — he was so dehydrated that doctors struggled to find a vein to put in an IV. In the emergency room, his blood pressure was 64 over 35.

“It was a pretty chaotic 48 hours,” Moore says.

Though it’s not clear exactly what causes the condition, many patients with MIS-C — typically Hispanic or Black boys under 9 years old — had or were exposed to the coronavirus. Bryce eventually tested positive for the coronavirus antibodies.

MIS-C made national news when it started showing up in children early on the pandemic. In May, the Centers for Disease Control issued an advisory. Valley Children’s pot out its own warning about the disease in July. More than 2,000 cases of MIS-C have been reported and it’s the cause of 30 deaths, according to the CDC.

As of Feb. 22, Valley Children’s had treated MIS-C in 86 patients.

Sweaty, thirsty and wanting to go home

Frankie Quintana and his family were cautious — maybe overly so — when it came to COVID. They wore masks before it was mandated, had their food delivered and had a bucket of bleach water on the ready. His mother remembers early on in the pandemic seeing the YouTube videos of people passing out in China.

“I knew that children could possibly get it. I knew adults were getting it,” Joanique Quintana says.

She didn’t think it would hit her son — a 17-year-old Clovis High School senior — so hard.

What started out as sniffles progressed into a days-long fever that reached as high as 104 degrees. Frankie was eventually admitted to Valley Children’s via ambulance. He spent a week and a half in the hospital, much of the time hooked up to a biPap, a breathing machine one step down from a ventilator.

He remembers the exhaustion. It attacked his whole body to the point where he couldn’t move his arms. He was sweaty always and constantly thirsty, and just wanted to go home.

More than six months later, he says he still dreams about being back in the hospital.

Joanique Quintana is thankful that Valley Children’s was so accommodating to her as a parent. She was allowed to stay with her son, something she says was instrumental in helping Frankie pull through.

“They made it easy to keep an eye on Frankie while he was fighting for his life,” she says.

She’s also grateful to the person who donated the plasma that was part of Frankie’s treatment. Known as convalescent plasma therapy, the treatment was considered experimental at the time, but turned her son around, Quintana says.

Within a day, Frankie saw major improvement.

“If it wasn’t for that person donating, I don’t know, maybe my son wouldn’t be here right now.”

Don’t be afraid to advocate

Moore says her son has been through a trauma and is only now 95% returned his normal self, though he is restricted from playing sports or strenuous activities and will have to check in with a cardiologist and rheumatologist for the next six months.

Children don’t have the vocabulary to explain what’s wrong or how they are feeling, so parents have to trust their instincts. They also can’t be afraid to advocate for their children.

“Don’t settle,” she says, “for just being sent home with Motrin and Tylenol.”

This story was originally published March 9, 2021 at 12:01 AM.