Medical Mystery: A Mother's Touch Solves It

July 27, 2006 — -- Keeley, a 5-year-old girl in suburban New Jersey, awoke in the middle of the night with alarming symptoms.

Keeley's mom, Tara, who asked that the family's last name not be used, says she heard a noise coming from her daughter's room at around 4:30 in the morning.

"I called my mom 'cause I was trying to stand-up but I couldn't. I just collapsed on the floor," Keeley said.

"I could tell right away there was something wrong with her speech. She said, 'Daddy, I'm seeing two of you," said Keeley's dad, Bill.

Tara said she couldn't understand how her daughter could be fine the day before and then so sick within 12 hours.

Tara and Bill rushed Keeley to the hospital, where their daughter got immediate attention in the intensive care unit.

Dr. Fred Henretig, professor of pediatrics and emergency medicine at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and the head of the Clinical Toxicology section at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, handled Keeley's care when she arrived at the hospital.

Henretig says a number of things were going through his mind. "What is going on here? Why is this child half-paralyzed? Trauma, poisonings, fulminate infections. Also, although more ominous -- you worry about brain tumors and some kind of vascular catastrophe such as a stroke."

Tara says the physician wanted to get an MRI of her daughter to see if they could see anything like a tumor.

"I was scared out of my mind. We found a seat in the waiting room and basically just prayed," said Bill.

"We were in the waiting room for a while and then the doctor came out and said, 'Everything looked fine. There was no sign of a tumor, there was no sign of aneurysm,'" Tara said.

So the doctors started from scratch. "[We thought] about every other possibility of rapidly progressive weakness in a young child Keeley's age," said Henretig.

Tara says she remembers the doctors asking a lot of questions about what Keeley had been exposed to.

According to Henretig there are a number of poisonings that can cause weakness. "The most classic is botulism. In years gone by, polio could present this way. Of course, polio is very rare in the United States. And then tick paralysis, an illness brought on by the bite of certain species of ticks."