Infant Botulism Diagnosis

December 14, 2007 by Bill Strong We apologize for the quick mass email but we just wanted to let everyone know what was going on. Unfortunately we have some pretty serious news. Gwendolyn was admitted into the ICU this afternoon and they are treating her as if she has infant botulism; a very rare (a few hundred cases a year in the country), typically soil born illness that basically leads to paralysis in the limbs and if untreated can quickly make it difficult for the patient to breathe, swallow, and eat. The good news is that when we brought her in to the hospital she was still doing quite well, is still eating well, and seems relatively comfortable. We've been told that the antidote is extremely effective so assuming the diagnosis is correct once the antidote is administered she should quickly improve and should more or less fully recover within 3-4 weeks in the hospital. The antidote is very controlled and protected by the federal government (don't know why yet) but we received approval tonight and it is being flown in from some Army base as I type this. It should be here in the next few hours and will be administered immediately over a few hour period. It's obviously early and we're learning more by the minute but the pediatric neurologist and ER doctor we saw this afternoon seemed pretty confident that this is what she has. We're still in complete shock and scared and just trying to take it one step at a time but we thought everyone would want to know what was going on.

Our minds are all over the place so if we forgot someone who should know please forward it on for us.

Bill and Victoria

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