Silke Jasso
A 3-year-old girl in Oregon awoke on May 13 to find herself unable to stand or use her arms. Evelyn Lewis’ mother, Amanda, filmed her daughter’s failed attempts to stand along with her husband. FOX 8 reports that the parents then took Evelyn to the emergency room, where a doctor discovered a small but dangerous reason for her condition.
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After combing through Evelyn’s hair, the doctor discovered a tick, diagnosing her with a condition called “tick paralysis.”
“The doctor talked to us for a minute and said over the past 15 years he had seen about 7 or 8 children her age with identical symptoms and more than likely she had a tick,” Amanda wrote on Facebook. “It can affect dogs also and can be fatal. I’m glad we took her in when we did and that it wasn’t something worse and that we found it before it got worse.”
According to the American Lyme Disease Foundation, tick paralysis attacks a person’s muscles and results in symptoms like muscle pains and numbness of the legs. These begin after a tick has attached itself to a host, generally on the scalp.
Fortunately, Evelyn is now doing much better, as her mother wrote on Facebook that she “is now pretty much completely back to her feisty little self. She complains a lot about her head itching but otherwise, she’s just fine.”
