Eight months after the death of a 4-year-old girl who was carried away shortly after contracting COVID-19, her mother looks back on the circumstances of the tragedy to denounce the lack of support she experienced when she left the hospital .
Little Lexie Allison died on January 17th, just under 24 hours after being admitted to CHUL’s intensive care unit.
It was fulminant myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart’s muscle tissue that resulted in tissue death, that overwhelmed the little girl.
While it was originally believed that the COVID-19 she was carrying was solely responsible for this tragedy, other factors may have come into play, according to the medical examiner on the file. Lexie was also infected with an adenovirus and a metapneumovirus.
“If this myocarditis is most likely of viral origin, there is nothing to confirm it or even to specify the virus or viruses that may be responsible for this pathology,” specifies Dr. Jean-Marc Picard in his recent report.
With kind approval
Lexi Allison
Lack of support
The child’s mother used the document’s release in recent days to denounce the lack of support following the tragedy.
When her daughter had just died, she was simply told to go home.
“We were left to our own devices, completely lost. There’s no point in having to return home in the state we were in,” laments Joanie Patry, whose only solace was a box containing her daughter’s personal belongings and a bedspread made of hair.
According to him, the hospital informed him that there was no social worker on site because the incident happened in the middle of the night.
“How about at least giving us brochures for accessible resources, telling us how to explain the situation to our children, or directing us to someone to help us through the crisis? ‘ plagues the mother of the family.
influence on healing
It has been eight months since little Lexie breathed her last, a fate her parents face every day.
Though grief is always difficult to live with, Ms Patry agreed to open up to the Journal in hopes other parents wouldn’t have to go through what she went through.
“Personally it had a huge impact on my healing, I was very upset with how we were treated,” she concludes.
Supports
The CHU de Québec declined to comment on the case, but noted that in the event of a nocturnal death, “the bereaved are cared for by the clinical team able to intervene appropriately.”
A social worker must then undertake needs assessment, intervene and refer people to organizations that provide appropriate services.
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