Miraculous Recovery for Girl, 4, Who Nearly Died From the Flu
A 4-year-old shocked doctors and her parents alike by ending up on life support after contracting an everyday case of the flu — then bouncing back, shortly after her parents organized a multi-city prayer vigil, in a recovery her dad describes as “beyond belief.”
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Gemma Botelho didn’t seem dangerously ill when she came down with a fever on Dec. 13 at home in Florida. Her mother, Lejla Szabo, and father, Alex Botelho (shown below with Gemma), gave her medicine to lower her slight fever. Because she was feeling well the next day, they allowed her to dance and sing in her preschool’s Christmas play and return to school the following two days. “I thought the flu — you have a cough and cold, and you stay home for two days,” Szabo told CNN. “It didn’t cross my mind it could lead to something … serious.”
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Gemma Botelho with her parents. (Photo: CNN)
But it did. On Dec. 17, Gemma “was pale,” her mother told ABC 13. “She had cold hands, cold feet.” So they rushed her to the ER. Soon after she arrived, the preschooler went into cardiac arrest. Doctors performed CPR on her for 45 minutes but were unable to restart Gemma’s heart. “We heard beeping, and then no beeping,” said Szabo about Gemma, whose tests later showed that the flu had damaged her heart. “She was just flatlining. We really felt that we had lost her.” Gemma’s dad “told me we just had to look back and appreciate those four and a half years we had with her,” she added. Botelho explained, “[I] really thought it was the end.”
Gemma Botelho in the hospital. (Photo: CNN)
Anticipating that the girl may have needed a heart transplant, doctors transferred her via helicopter to All Children’s Hospital in St. Petersburg, Fla., about 250 miles away. Two days passed there with Gemma in intensive care. Szabo said physicians told her “we’ll have to wait and see.”
So on Dec. 20, the Hungary-born mom and Brazil-bred dad rallied family and friends to say prayers for their daughter at Catholic masses in Argentina, Italy, Miami, and Boston, as well as in their home countries. Amazingly, that same evening the parents got the incredible news that Gemma’s heart was beating.
Gemma’s parents, Lejla Szabo and Alex Botelho. (Photo: CNN)
By the day before Christmas Eve, the preschooler’s heart was functioning well enough that she was able to come off life support. “Everyone here at the hospital — their spirits are lifted,” said Botelho. “They said they live for moments like this because the odds were 99 percent against her.”
Photo: CNN
The pediatric heart surgeon Robert Hannan, MD, who first put Gemma on life support, told CNN: “I’m so grateful for the care she received at All Children’s and the power of prayer and family. … I think she’s going to make a great recovery. A month from now this is going to be a little bump in the road.”
But it’s a bump that the girl’s parents want other mothers and fathers to avoid — by getting their kids flu shots. “That feeling of losing your child right in front of you … I don’t want to feel that way again,” said Szabo. “Or anyone else.”
Top photo: CNN
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