A teenager who was diagnosed last month with strep throat is recovering after family members said the bacteria behind the illness got into the girl’s bloodstream, causing septic shock.
Jennifer Phillips, the mother of 16-year-old Alexis Patton, told WAND that her daughter started to feel sick on Dec. 21.
“I took her (to the hospital) that next day, Friday, and then by Monday evening, she was intubated on life support,” Phillips said.
She told the news station that doctors determined that the bacteria that causes strep throat, streptococcus, got into Alexis's bloodstream and settled in her legs. In a GoFundMe account started to help support the family through Alexis's illness, family friends said Alexis went into septic shock because of the bacteria and had to be put on a ventilator.
"It's been really hard — the traveling back and forth, the sleepless nights at the hospital over and over. It's been really rough," Phillips told WAND last week. "She's going to have to have a lot of surgeries, a lot of skin grafts and (she will have to) learn how to walk again."
Family members said on a Facebook page dedicated to updating people on Alexis’s condition that the 16-year-old underwent multiple surgeries. Doctors told her family on Friday that her infection was resolved just over three weeks after she was first hospitalized.
Family members on Sunday posted a video of Alexis as she continued her recovery.
Phillips warned parents to take their children in to the doctor’s office as soon as they feel ill in light of her daughter’s illness.
"Don't wait to take your kids in," she told WAND. "Even if they just have common cold/flu symptoms, make sure they're getting checked."
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