COVID symptoms linger for toddler with health problems

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This article was published 10/12/2020 (1696 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A possibility the Thiessens desperately tried to avoid has become all too real.

Two-year-old Hallie Thiessen has been infected with COVID. Hallie is two years old, and has a number of medical complications.

In March, The Carillon wrote Thiessen has eosinophilic gastrointestinal disease. The disease, among other things, causes autoimmune responses to her body’s processing of food. Hallie is fed by a tube that goes into her stomach.

“She was already very vulnerable to the weird effects of COVID,” Thiessen said.

Cari said Hallie has had a fever for three and a half weeks, the effects of COVID on Hallie’s gastrointestinal tract have been terrible, and Hallie cries frequently while in pain. Concerns also include blood in Hallie’s ostomy bag, Cari said.

Cari has spent much time with Hallie in emergency at Bethesda Regional Health Centre, but Cari said there isn’t much hospital staff can do for her child.

“It’s such a tough spot to be in because she’s absolutely miserable and suffering and yet there’s nothing that we can really do but just watch it happen, and it feels absolutely horrible as her mom,” Thiessen said.

Thiessen said Hallie’s symptoms began in the middle of November. The whole Thiessen household eventually got COVID. Cari said she had classic symptoms, while her husband Jon was briefly sick one night, but said he woke up and felt fine. Her other child, Addison, was completely asymptomatic.

Thiessen doesn’t know how the family got COVID in the first place given how protective the family had been.

The COVID testing process was straightforward, Thiessen said, but pandemic precautions have affected doctor visits for the Thiessens. Everything is virtual, and Cari said she can’t always immediately contact doctors. She must call and leave voicemails, and wait for doctors to call her back.

The entire situation is complicated “for families like ours that need the extra medical care.”

Thiessen said the government is in a difficult position and people are going to be vocally opposed to whatever they do. But Thiessen said people became too comfortable with the apparent COVID-sparse summer.

“We were definitely in a happy place in Manitoba for a long time with low COVID, and I think people here got too comfortable and didn’t realize how serious it actually was in other places of the world,” Thiessen said.

“I feel right now our government is having to play clean up for a lot of people that haven’t followed regulations up until this point,” Thiessen said, adding she thought the government is enacting measures to try to protect the sick like her daughter.

Thiessen said her husband works at Vantage Woodwork, and said the company has been accommodating to the family’s circumstances, including choosing to adhere to strict safety measures before the government mandated certain restrictions.

Even if Hallie is technically “recovered,” according to public health, she could get the virus again, Thiessen fears.

“It’s not a true number of what is actually going on because Hallie is not anywhere near recovered,” Cari said.